By JOYANNA LOVE/ Senior Staff Writer

Alexis Pierce spelled her way to victory with “tribulations” at Clanton Middle School’s spelling bee on Jan. 11.

Pierce, a seventh-grade student, will advance to the county-wide bee on Feb. 2 at LeCroy Career Technical Center.

She said it felt good to win.

Pierce said she wanted to be a part of the spelling bee “because I like learning new things and being smart.”

“My friends and my family helped me study, and I wrote out definitions,” Pierce said.

During the bee, Pierce was nervous and her legs were shaking.

Pierce had participated in the school bee last year, but this was the first time she won. She said she plans “to study harder” in preparation of the county-wide bee.

Runner-up Matthew Williams said it felt good to make runner-up. While attending school in Florida, Williams had won a school-level bee at his school, but not advanced to the county level. He said he wanted to participate in the spelling bee this year to see if he could make it to the county-level here.

Students interested in participating in the bee first had to achieve a qualifying score on a written test, according to Principal Carla White. This test had been held before school let out for Christmas break.

The bee started with the word “sunny” and went for eight rounds, as those who misspelled a word sat out. Some of the troublesome words included: callous, paralysis, rafter, segregation, infraction and sparsely.

Students had been given a list of words to study in preparation for the event.

During the championship round, students had to spell two words in a row correctly in order to won.

White told students their word in turn, and a panel of three judges listened for mistakes.