A crowd packed South Park Elementary for Scripps National 2011 Spelling Bee on Wednesday.

44 students between 4^th and 8^th grade took the stage to compete in sectionals, one of three in Lake County this year.

“This gives the children a chance to celebrate their talent,” Diane Near, teacher of the gifted at South Park said. “So many events are to celebrate sports, this can celebrate intellectual abilities.”

For months students have been preparing for the bee. “We get the list of words in November and they’ve been practicing ever since,” Near explained. On Wednesday, students got to show off that hard work and sound out words like catkin; which was the first misspelling of the night.

After several hours of competition, the sectional finalists were narrowed to four who will now go onto compete in the bee at CLC up against eight other students. That winner will head to Washington. 

The following is a list of this year's Section I Lake County winners:

Sarang Park, Hawthorne Elementary School – South

Ben Edelstein, Caruso Middle School

Talia Apter, Northwood Jr. High School

Pranav Sivakumar, Barrington Middle School – Station Campus

-Previous article on Feb. 19-

All through January District 109 students competed in their school’s individual spelling bees. Now the six finalists, between fourth and eighth grade, will participate in this year’s sectional spelling bee.

That competition kicks off on Wednesday at South Park Elementary School in Deerfield at 6:30 p.m.; it’s one of three sectional bees in Lake County this year.

The following is a list of this year's District 109 winners:

Evan Oldham, 5^th Grade, South Park Elementary School

Adam Meyerhoff, 5^th Grade, Wilmot Elementary School

Jean Kim, 5^th Grade, Walden Elementary School

Adam Aaronson, 4^th Grade, Kipling Elementary School

Abbey Osborn, 8^th Grade, Shepard Middle School

Ben Edelstein, 7^th Grade, Caruso Middle School