Gallup Catholic student wins spelling bee crown

By Bill Donovan
Staff writer

Gallup Catholic student Gabriel Lim listens to the definition of a word during the annual McKinley County Spelling Bee on Tuesday at Kennedy Middle School while behind him Andrew Melendez waits his turn. Lim went on to win the competition by correctly spelling "reminiscences" and Melendez was the runner-up, getting tripped up spelling "animadversion." Both students will compete March 11 at Sandia Prep. [Photo by Jeff Jones/Independent]

GALLUP — Andrew Melendez will probably remember the word "animadversion" for a long time.

That was the word in Tuesday's McKinley County Spelling Bee that sealed the victory for Gallup Catholic student Gabriel Lim.

Melendez, who goes to Kennedy Mid-School, came in second when he misspelled "animadversion" and Lim spelled it correctly. Lim won by correctly spelling "reminiscences."

By the way, if you want to impress your friend and throw animadversion in your conversion, it means to criticize someone adversely.

This was Lim's first victory in the competition in two attempts. For Melendez, this is the second time in two years of finishing second.

But he has one more year of competition available to him. He said he plans to study a little harder next year.

Both Lim and Melendez made the competition tense this year, going through almost 20 words before Melendez tripped up.

And these weren't the easy and medium words that tripped up the other 28 students in the competition from 16 area schools.

By the time it got to the final two, the judges had decided to go to the advanced words with both spellers spreading out the suspense by asking for definitions and use of the words in a sentence.

Both said that being in the competition in prior years helped because they remembered some of the words from studying them before.

The competition now goes to the state and the regional levels before ending with the national competition this spring in Washington, D.C.

Melendez and Lim will compete at Sandia Prep on March 11.