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WARREN -- A Bazetta boy who became the youngest student to win the Tribune Chronicle Scripps National Spelling Bee last year was eliminated from competition and will not move on for a chance to compete in the Scripps National Spelling Bee this summer.
Phillip Gleason, son of Phillip and Heather Gleason, won the Tribune bee in 2020 at the age of 8. The national bee, which had been scheduled for Memorial Day weekend in Washington, D.C., was called off in 2020 because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Tribune Chronicle's annual bee, which normally serves as a feeder bee to the national Scripps bee, was canceled this year because of the ongoing pandemic.
Because he won the local bee last year, Phillip competed March 27 in the Scripps National Spelling Bee At-Large Region Two regional spelling bee, which was on Zoom. Heather Gleason said 20 spellers competed and Phillip came in 13th place.
She said each speller was given three words at a time and they had to spell the first one, give a definition for the second and spell the third. Phillip misspelled his third word, jealousy.
"They didn't give the ages of the other spellers, but he looked like a baby compared to the other kids," she said. "Most of them looked to be 12 or 13."
Phillip will turn 10 in May.
Heather said Phillip was nervous because his Zoom connection was not the greatest, and she thinks he overthought the word he missed.
"I think he thought it was another word because he thought jealousy was too easy," she said.
To get to the regional bee, he was one of the top 20 students who took an online test in early March. The first 25 words were given orally by the computer, and Phillip had to type them in on the computer. The second 25 words were definitions, and he was given four multiple choice answers.
The top 20 students completing at least 41 words correctly competed in the March 27 regional bee, which included spellers from Ohio and other surrounding states.
Phillip is a member of T.E.A.C.H., which stands for Trumbull Education Association of Christian Homeschoolers. He is in the fourth grade, but performs above grade level in most subjects, Heather said.
The 94th Annual Scripps National Spelling Bee is scheduled to begin remotely with preliminaries in June and the finals July 8 as a televised in-person bee with a limited number of contestants at Disney World in Orlando, Fla., according to information released by Scripps.
Among those spellers heading to the 94th Annual Scripps National Spelling Bee is Christopher Dominick, a seventh-grader from Struthers Middle School. Christopher, son of Nicholas Dominick and Delaney Malley of Struthers, won the 88th annual 21-WFMJ Regional Spelling Bee on March 13.