Spelling bee champ takes his immense vocabulary to national competition
By Sandra Jontz,
Washington bureau
WASHINGTON — For one brief moment, all eyes will be focused on
Mark Norsworthy on Tuesday night as he stands in front of near-blinding lights and a
single microphone.
He’ll be asked to spell correctly any one of hundreds of
thousands of possible words in the English language.
Can he do it?
Did he do it?
You’ll have to stay tuned to find out.
As the European winner for military schools, the Ramstein Middle
School student is one of 248 contestants competing in the 74th annual Scripps Howard
National Spelling Bee here in the nation’s capital.
Mark, 14, is a straight-A student who has lived his entire life at
Ramstein Air Base in Germany — after being born at Landstuhl Army Medical Center,
that is.
Military life runs deep in the family bloodlines. His father, Mike
Norsworthy, is active duty Air Force stationed in Germany, and both of Mark’s
grandfathers are retired Air Force veterans.
Mark and his family have been in Washington since Saturday. The
spelling bee staff set up numerous tours of the city for the contestants and their
sponsors, even on the day of the competition.
The spellers also had a chance to meet-and-greet during a Memorial
Day bash, complete with volleyball, softball, horseshoes and Frisbee in addition to the
barbecue dinner, apple pie and square-dancing at Gunston Hall, the colonial mansion in
Northern Virginia built by U.S. founding father George Mason.
Mark, who has earned a brown belt in karate, plays the piano and
enjoys a variety of music, joins a cast of spellers with varying hobbies.
This week, he competes against an avid angler, an artist and writer.
The competition has been set up over three days. On Tuesday, the
contestants were split into two groups, with half competing in the first round from 4 to 6
p.m. EDT, and the other half from 7 to 9 p.m.
Mark fell into the second group, making for a long and probably
anxious day for the youngster.
If Mark makes it to the second round, he’ll be up bright and
early for an 8 a.m. start time Wednesday.
While in Washington, Mark has had a chance to study spelling words
from materials like a Paideia, or a booklet of words that helps students improve
vocabularies by sorting spelling words into categories of related terminology.
Those, apparently, are the easy words. If Mark makes it to the second
round of competition, he could be tasked with spelling any of the 475,000 words found in
Webster’s Third New International Dictionary.
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