March 14, 2008 — Closing her eyes and stepping up to the microphone Friday, 13-year-old Jo Ann Thomas Lewis thought for a few minutes before taking on the final word in this year's territorial spelling bee.
After asking the judges panel for a definition and a sentence using the word, Lewis traced the letters out on her hand.
"C-h-i-r-o-g-r-a-p-h-i-c," she said, listening for the ding of the bell that signifies when a word has been spelled incorrectly. But the bell didn't come. Instead, Lewis was crowned this year's territorial spelling bee champion, and will advance in a couple of months to represent the Virgin Islands in the Scripps National Spelling Bee in Washington, D.C.
The bee went on for almost four hours Friday, bringing in 12 of the territory's top spellers in a heated 15-round competition held at Palms Court Harborview Hotel on St. Thomas. Lewis, an eighth grader at St. Croix Seventh Day Adventist School, spent a few of those rounds battling Good Hope's Diana Cardenas and All Saints Cathedral School's Portia Norkaitis for the title.
Norkaitis struck out at the top of the 15th round with "phytotoxic," while Cardenas misspelled "splenetic."
To clench the victory, Lewis followed up with the correct spellings of "pancetta" and "chirographic."
As the crowd went wild with applause as Lewis was declared the winner, she immediately started wiping tears from her cheeks.
"I'm so excited," she said after receiving her first-place trophy. "And with God's help, I think I can go on and win the national spelling bee for the Virgin Islands."
Friday's bee was sponsored by the V.I. Daily News.
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