WS Chronicle

By correctly spelling “paraphrasable” and then “benevolent,” Nicholas Lamphier became the Winston-Salem/Forsyth County School System’s 2013 Spelling Bee champion.

Nicholas, a sixth-grader at Paisley IB Magnet School, was one of 54 elementary and middle school students who participated in the annual bee last week at the school system’s Education Building.

Adam Bender, an eighth-grader at Hanes Magnet School, placed second, and Caleb Riggins, a fifth-grader at Brunson Elementary School, placed third.

This was the third year that Nicholas has competed in the district-wide spelling bee. Earlier, he won the spelling bee at Paisley by correctly spelling “baccalaureate,” a word that he breezed right through. Paisley being home to grades six through nine of the International Baccalaureate program ensured that he knew that one.

“It was kind of weird,” he said. “I see it every day on the walls of classrooms and outside the school.”

Nicholas said that he was relatively calm for most of the bee. “When it was the final two, my heart was pounding.” Nicholas’ parents, Michael and Danielle, and grandmother Carol Lamphier were there to see him compete. Nicholas was in the Top 10 the first two times he competed, and his grandmother said that she would have been delighted simply to see him in the Top 10 again. So this was a real bonus, she said. “I can’t believe it,” grandma said.

On March 11, Nicholas will compete in the regional bee at Lawrence Joel Veterans Memorial Coliseum. After the district-wide bee ended, he was thinking that, after enjoying a celebratory lunch with his family, he might consult one of his spelling lists to start getting ready for that.