Sinjon Howell emerged as the victor in the Hiland Middle School Spelling Bee Friday, Jan. 27 after 14 rounds that winnowed down Hiland’s best spellers to a championship round.

Sinjon, who won after correctly spelling ‘linguistically’ and ‘expressionism’, modestly describes himself as “not a very good speller.” The Hiland seventh-grade student prepared for the bee with his mother, who drilled with Sinjon on the bee’s word list.

Eighth-grade student Joe Wengerd took second place after misspelling ‘annotate’ in the championship round.

The bee started out with 14 contestants from grades seven and eight. Spellers nailed such words as ‘bristle’, ‘assign’, ‘chorus’, ‘quarrel’ and ‘echoed’, but their ranks were thinned by ‘onslaught’, ‘hula’, ‘flannel’, ‘blatant’, ‘laborious’ and ‘defiantly’.

Howell and Wengerd entered the championship round after seventh-grade student Ben Beachy misspelled ‘perseverance.’ Beachy, Sinjon and Wengerd went toe-to-toe for five rounds before the final contest.

Wengerd said he was confident as he spelled every word until he got to annotate, realizing too late that he had omitted the ‘o’ for an ‘e’.

Also participating in this year’s bee were, by grade: Seventh grade: Madeline Kauffman, Braden Mast, Kendra Miller, Jessica Troyer, Ashley Weaver, and Brittany Wengerd. Eighth grade: Damon Hochstetler, David Mast, Michael Miller, Miranda Sommers, and Emma Yoder.

Pronouncer was Matt Johnson, Hiland principal. Language Arts teachers LaVonna Gress and Mary Myrick served as judges.

Sinjon’s win clears him for a shot at the Regional Spelling Bee, to be held March 3 at GlenOak High School in Canton.