How do you spell success?
Ask Justin Bergen. Last month he carried a winning streak that took him from his classroom at the Bulkley Valley Christian School (BVCS) and landed him in a competition in Toronto this week.
Bergen is the school’s spelling champion after a series of bees. After getting into the his grade seven class’ top four spellers, he won first place in the school wide spelling bee.
That earned him a ticket to Prince George to compete in the regionals.
The nail biter came to a conclusion when Bergen successfully spelled out the letters for ‘molecular.’
He said there were about 38 other contestants in Prince George.
The secret of his success of dedicated studying. The spelling bee organizers hand out lists of potential words ahead of time and Bergen said he reads through the words before getting his mom to act as orator to feed him words to spell.
The challenge increases for each level of competition, he said, and pronunciation is the biggest challenge he faces.
Fortunately the pressure doesn’t get to him — he does point out it was hard to see the large crowd in Prince George thanks to the theatre lighting — and he’s looking forward to attending the Postmedia Canspell National Spelling Bee Final that begins today and runs to Sunday.