Popular on Patch: Local Spelling Champ Wins Spot in D.C. National Bee

Representing the home team on McClure’s stage, Western Springs seventh-grader Alia Abiad became District 101’s first-ever Cook County champion.

Victory! Local Spelling Champ Wins Spot in D.C. National Bee

Representing the home team on McClure’s stage, Western Springs seventh-grader Alia Abiad became District 101’s first-ever Cook County champion.

F-R-U-I-T-I-O-N, and with that twelfth-consecutive correctly spelled word, Western Springs seventh-grader Alia Abiad’s hard work and study came to fruition on Thursday night as she won the Regional ISC Cook County Spelling Bee Final, securing her place in the Scripps National Bee in Washington D.C. in May. Facing down nine other hardy contenders from throughout the county—an insanely young field with three fifth-graders and no eighth-graders—Abiad breezed through balcony, finale, threshold, recalcitrant, Qatari, prabhu, tamarind, broach, garlicky, spectacular and median before fruition finally secured her the win. “At first, I wasn’t sure if it was my last word or not!” Abiad said. “[Then] I was really excited, so I was trying to calm down…

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Jeff Wingert

2:20 pm on Saturday, February 23, 2013

Awesome...In our yard and on our trees! Congratulations Ailia.   more ›

McClure 7th-Grader Defending Home Turf in Spelling-Bee County Finals

Western Springs' undefeated Alia Abiad has already won the school and regional bees; on Thursday night, she returns to her school for the third time to take on other champions.

Here’s how Western Springs seventh-grader Alia Abiad tackles a word in a spelling bee. “I see if I know it first,” she explained. “If I know it, I try to picture it and see if it looks right. And if I don’t know it, I see if I can get it to match the sounds of the language of origin… Slavic is very phonetic, so if it’s Slavic you don’t want a lot of extra letters, but if it’s French you want a lot of extra letters.”  Doubtless, that was a trick that helped her win the McClure Junior High School spelling bee when her second-to-last word was the very French “pompadour.” She sealed it with “cauterize”—her parents Homer and Lorraine are both doctors. For the word that ended up winning her the regional bee at McClure two Thursdays ago, “…

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McClure 7th Grader Wins Spelling Bee on Home Turf

Alia Abiad placed first in the Thursday regional competition held at McClure; she advances to the next level, also held at the school, on Feb. 21.

Quickly: your word is “prevaricate.” (Means “to act evasive.”) Don’t look at it again. Can you spell it? McClure 7th-grader Alia Abiad can, and doing so left her as the last competitor standing at Thursday’s bee competition at her home school, beating out 16 other school champions (including St. Francis Xavier’s Eleanor Tung-Hahn.) Abiad got her chance when second-place finisher Audrey Santora, a 6th-grader from North Riverside’s Komarek School, missed on “Bethesda.” The Western Springs student never missed a word for the entire bee, and she advances to the Cook County finals in two weeks. “She’s got a good a chance as anybody,” said McClure principal Dan Chick. “She’s a very, very intelligent young woman, and I know she’s been working …

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