By Ethan Benedicto
The City of Casey celebrated its handful of winners following the finale of the VicSpell competition, where students from Year 5 until Year 8 engaged in a friendly competition of memory, problem-solving and more.
Battling through stormy weather and tumultuous power outages, students from all over eastern Victoria remained eager, with a 100 per cent attendance rate and prizes from dictionaries, trophies and vouchers won.
Trevor Sowdon, convenor and founder of VicSpells was more than just proud of the students who participated; as always, he shared the children’s excitement in competition when it came to who could spell the best.
“We know it’s a tight competition, but it’s a very fair and generous competition meaning they do respect their schoolmates who may beat them or were beaten,” Sowdon said.
“We had families coming from all over East Gippsland and of course, some had to rely on trains and parents, family, teachers and some had to walk there.”
Beaconhills College Year 8 student, Cooper Buxton placed first in his respective year level, with Ethan Cruse from Yarraman Secondary coming in second.
Also from Beaconhills, Year 7 student Emily Wang came second in her year level, just shy of first-place winner Alliah Lindner-Brownrigg from Yarram Secondary.
While St Brendan’s Primary School from Lakes Entrance Year 6 student Indi Rijs took first in their respective year level, Yohan Bala and Shradda Manikandan, both from Tullialan Primary School, respectively took second and third palaces.
Sowdon, who began VicSpells 20 years ago wanted to do with the aim of promoting good spelling, but also the foster that sense of camaraderie and engagement from students with one another through friendly bouts.
“Sometimes you get two students from the same school if one goes out early, he or she is really keen for the other student to do well,” Sowdon said.
Judge Patrick McNally also presented the winners with dictionaries on behalf of Oxford University Press, and Jim and Carol from Triangle Trophies donated their share of trophy engravings for the first and second place holders.
With the finals wrapped up, Sowdon is looking forward for more to come in 2025, eager to see more students take up the challenge.
