CROWNPOINT

“It was hard,” Mythius Domingo said about his win over classmate Kimmora Begay for the championship of the Navajo Nation/Navajo Times Eastern Agency Spelling Bee.

The pair attends Dzilth-Na-O-Dith-Hle Community School in Bloomfield, New Mexico. The school’s team drove two hours to compete at St. Paul’s Parish Hall in Crownpoint. Then they went a grueling 62 rounds in the fifth-grade division last Thursday.

“Some of the words were completely the opposite of the words that I knew,” the 11-year-old Mythias said. After an hour of back-and-forth spelling, he was named champion on his winning words of “spree” and “goblin.”

Fellow fifth-grader Kimmora got close to winning the title a couple of times but didn’t lock in a second word as the rules require. A student has to get two words in a row correct in order to be named champion.

As soon as Mythias finished spelling “goblin,” the small crowd burst into cheer. “I was, like, ‘I think I’m going to be the first one out,’” Mythius said. “They said they were going to mix up the eighth-grade words with all the other grade words and I was, like, ‘I don’t think I can spell some of them.’”

Mythius said what also made it difficult was when the pronouncer would mispronounce words. This happened several times during the spelling bee. Despite this challenge, he was still able to finish in first. This was the second time he and his classmate Kimmora went head to head.