Genoa’s Joshua Lozier in National ACSI Spelling Bee

By LENNY C. LEPOLA

News Assis­tant Man­ag­ing Editor

Imag­ine start­ing out com­pet­ing against 15,000 oth­ers in a con­test that has local, dis­trict, regional and, finally, a national level of com­pe­ti­tion and end­ing up fifth in the nation. Almost incom­pre­hen­si­ble, right? Most of us con­sider our­selves aver­age folks; we would expect to find our­selves in the mid­dle of the pack and be sat­is­fied that we got there.

Genoa Town­ship res­i­dent Joshua Lozier is one of those who broke away from the mid­dle of the pack and tied for fifth place out of an orig­i­nal field of 15,000 who com­peted in the Asso­ci­a­tion of Chris­t­ian Schools Inter­na­tional Spelling Bee held in Wash­ing­ton D.C. on May 12.

The Wor­thing­ton Chris­t­ian School eighth grade stu­dent did not arrive at the ACSI National Bee overnight. He placed first in his ACSI dis­trict spelling bee with the top four from the dis­trict advanc­ing to regional, he placed third at regional’s where the top four advanced to the ACSI National Spelling Bee.

Asked if he was ner­vous com­pet­ing at the national spelling bee, Lozier said he was at first, but as the other com­peti­tors began spelling words he said he grew more confident.

Lozier also said he believes that he’s a nat­ural speller, not a word mem­o­rizer, but he stud­ied word lists and a dic­tio­nary before com­pe­ti­tions, and he also Googled words.

Asked what the most dif­fi­cult word was that he had to spell in the ACSI National Spelling Bee, Lozier said the word that finally stumped him – solipsism.

One of the high­lights of his trip to Wash­ing­ton, Lozier said, was a visit to Arling­ton Ceme­tery where he placed a wreath on the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.

Dur­ing last Thurs­day evening’s Genoa Town­ship Board of Trustees meet­ing the trustees read a procla­ma­tion des­ig­nat­ing May 12 here­after as Joshua Lozier Spelling Bee Cham­pion Day.

Joshua Lozier, the son of Ted and Beth Lozier, will be a Wor­thing­ton Chris­t­ian School fresh­man in the fall.

Posted by Gary Henery on Jun 13 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.