Honey tastes sweet victory to retain St James crown

Montego Bay, St James:

Name: Honey Advani

Age: 12

School: Heinz Simonitsch School

Coach: Sunil Advani

Winning word: M-E-I-O-S-I-S

Top 5

1. Honey Advani, Heinz Simonitsch School

2. Malique Markes, St Mary’s Preparatory

3. Richan Allie Brown, Alcar Academy

4. Bazal Arshad, Mt Alvernia Preparatory

5. Micah Gayle, Alcar Academy

Honey on winning: “I feel relief because I had a lot of pressure to win this year.”

This is Honey’s third time entering the competition and her second win. Earlier this year, she entered Scripps National Spelling Bee under the RSVBee programme, which allows spellers to enter independently.

The 12-year-old said that this time around, she put a lot more effort and time into preparing for the parish finals. She even looked at some unseen words, just in case the competition came down to that. Her foresight to go into the dictionary really paid off as she and champion boy Malique Markes of St Mary’s Preparatory battled to the finish after exhausting the words in the official Spelling Bee book.

History would repeat itself as Honey and Malique had found themselves in the same position last year with the same result.

Sunil Advani (father and coach): “It was a very tough competition, but I thank God that she was well prepared, and we look forward to see what will happen in the future.”

Mr Advani shared that they had started revision during the summer, and moving on to the national finals, preparations won’t be as tough and he thinks she has an advantage because of her experience at the national finals, where she came in fourth last year, and at the Scripps spelldown.