It’s Bee’s bee: Somonauk teen wins regional spelling bee

SYCAMORE – The winner of this year’s DeKalb County regional spelling bee seems like she was born for the title. It’s in her name, after all.

After 10 rounds and an hour of competition Saturday, Somonauk Middle School student Brighid ‘Bee’ Reid, 13, won the DeKalb County Regional Office of Education’s Spelling Bee. She’ll face off against peers from across the nation when she heads to Washington D.C. for the national spelling bee in May.

Reid, who goes by Bee, said she won the competition in honor of her biggest supporters.

“I’m doing this because I want to make all the people who I love the most proud,” Reid said. “Like my mom she helped me so, so much, and my dad.”

The regional bee featured students from across the county who gathered in front of a crowd to test their spelling skills at Sycamore High School.

When their daughter correctly spelled the championship round word, financier, James and Pamela Reid erupted with thunderous cheers that pierced the tense silence as the two other final contestants faltered in the tenth round of the spelling bee.

“I’m so excited for her,” mom Pamela Reid said. “It’s so nice to see kids who love language be recognized. It’s wonderful.”

Dad James Reid said his daughter’s hard work and tenacity paid off.

“Her mom and her have been doing spelling, we got the words in the December and I think everyday, two, three times a day they’ve been going at it hard,” James Reid said.

To win the regional spelling bee, Reid had to spell eight words – disaster, slurry, fomentation, bigotry, rabid, avatar, oblong and financier – correctly. She also had to demonstrate her understanding of the meaning of exorbitant, scanty, and distraught by correctly answering multiple choice questions.

Of those trials, Reid said spelling one specific word was her biggest challenge.

“The word fomentation, I had absolutely no idea how to spell that,” she said. “I had to ask him a bunch of questions. It was really scary.”

To help her spell, she said she looks up and imagines the letters of the word she wants to spell on the ceiling.

“Like a blackboard and someone’s writing on it,” Reid said. “That’s how I visualize, so I always have that. And my mom, when I was really little she would get me to read these really hard books. So she was setting me up for success from the beginning.”

Her dad said she’s already read John Steinbeck‘s “Of Mice and Men,” a handful of selections from Ernest Hemingway and has been known to get caught reading through a crack in her desk during math class.

Reid’s accomplishment’s are not exclusive to spelling and reading. In 2024, she was a top award winner in the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency 2024 Poster, Poetry, and Prose contest.

After prevailing to top her peers Saturday, Reid will now represent Somonauk Middle School and DeKalb County at the Scripps National Spelling Bee in Washington D.C. in May.

Somonauk Middle School reading specialist and spelling bee coach Emily Dolce said Reid made her school proud.

“I’ve done this for probably 11 years, and I’ve had people get close but I’ve never had somebody win it,” Dolce said. “I’m just so proud of her. She stays so calm and collected up there. I was a nervous wreck but she was so calm.”

Winning the regional spelling bee took sacrifice. The middle schooler said she gave up competitive swimming for three weeks so that she could focus on spelling bee preparation.

Reid said her nickname was chosen long before she set her sights on the spelling competition. After her win, she said there was one person she wanted to thank who was unable to attend Saturday.

“My grandma, who unfortunately passed away last year,” Reid said. “She was my biggest supporter and I know if she could be here she would be all over this.”