NORTHAMPTON – Beem Us Up, a troupe of ace wordsmiths who won two years ago, took back the Northampton Adult Spelling Bee trophy Wednesday by knocking out the Bridge Street School Parent Teacher Organization’s team in a heated final round.
Beem Us Up — made up of friends Alison Greene, Shoshana Marchand and Rachel Simpson — was neck-and-neck with the Bridge Street PTO for six consecutive words. Though Bridge Street breezed through obsure terms like “macadamize” and “quiescent,” the team’s misspelling of “cymotrichous” allowed Beem Us Up to sail to victory.
And for the three women, the word — which means “having wavy hair” — was very familiar.
“We actually had cymotrichous in spelling practice,” Simpson said. “We all knew it.”
Last year’s champions, the Daily Hampshire Gazette’s Headliners, were knocked out in a semifinal round that featured just two words — “verjuice,” which all teams misspelled, and “knaidel,” a Jewish dumpling, which Beem Us Up alone spelled correctly and so moved on to the final.
Beem Us Up, sponsored by Grey Matter Books, last won in 2014, though that year it was under the team name Beauties and the BEEst. The name this year is an homage to Star Trek, as were their uniforms and Marchand’s flashing of the Vulcan salute.
Each woman comes from a different background. Greene is a special education advocate, Marchand is a psychiatric nurse practitioner and Simpson is a real estate agent and former newspaper editor. But they all have in common a love of reading, and perhaps as a result, stellar spelling.
They come together just once per year in the hopes their way with orthography bests dozens of other competitors. This year a total of 37 teams competed.
“We’re like a spelling Brigadoon,” Greene said, referencing a fictional Scottish village that appears for one day every hundred years.
For practice, they meet just once. This year it was a casual affair over brunch that lasted about two hours.
As for the competition, they look to teamwork as a strategy for victory. They start each round with a hug, though all say they hate hugging. Marchand chalks it up to the resulting endorphins giving them an edge.
When a word is called, Marchand writes it on the official white board, while Greene and Simpson try their spellings on paper. Then they compare their tries.
“If somebody says they know for sure, we go with that,” Marchand said. “That usually works great.”
The annual Northampton Adult Spelling Bee, now in its 16th year, is a fundraiser for the Northampton Education Foundation’s Small Grants for Teachers program. The grants are awarded to Northampton public school teachers to support field trips and class projects.
Around $12,000 was raised at last year’s spelling bee.
Though the event elicits some serious competition, there’s a lot of fun to be had in the process.
Wacky costumes and deliberately goofy spelling attempts are just part of the scene at the bee.
The award for humor went to the Jew Jew Bees, sponsored by Jewish day school Lander-Grinspoon Academy. Members of that team were dressed up as giant boxes of candy reminiscent of Jujubes.
Competition was also tough for best costume, with teams dressed as mimes, fruits and even one that paid homage to David Bowie. But it was the upside-down attire of The BEEhinds that won the favor of the judges.
Team members all had the bottom half of a human body attached to their heads and shoulders, with their faces peeking out of the area where one would normally find the hindquarters.
Chris Lindahl can be reached at clindahl@gazettenet.com.