There's
no succedaneum (substitute) for
studying
Sunday, May 29, 2005 • BY
REBECCA SCHMOYER • Star-Ledger
Staff
When was the last time you casually
dropped the word paduasoy -- a heavy silk fabric -- in a
conversation?
How about mussitation -- a low,
continuous, indistinct sound -- or chiaroscurist -- a
painter who studies light and shade rather than
color?
These are the kind of words that Aaron
Sulick loves.
The sandy-blond 11-year-old from
Phillipsburg loves these words so much he has won the
regional spelling bee and, on Wednesday, will compete with
273 of the top spellers in the United States and elsewhere
in the 78th Annual Scripps National Spelling Bee.
The competition, in Washington, D.C., is
America's largest and longest-running spelling bee. ESPN
will broadcast the championship rounds live from 10 a.m. to
noon and 1 to 3:30 p.m. Thursday.
Aaron, a fifth-grader at the Andover
Morris Elementary School in Phillipsburg, will face the
country's top spellers, ages 9 to 14, and others from as far
away as New Zealand. The national spelling champion will
receive more than $16,000 in cash and savings bonds and an
engraved first-place cup.
Aaron is the youngest of New Jersey's
seven competitors.
The others are Tristan Kooker, 13, of
Upper Township Middle School, Petersburg, Cape May County;
Paul Cyr, 14, Green Bank Elementary School, Green Bank,
Burlington County; Arjun Modi, 13, George Washington Middle
School, Ridgewood, Bergen County; Carolyn Nguyen Vu, 12,
Resurrection School, Jersey City, Hudson County; Sultan
Elzeini, 13, Crossroads North Middle School, Monmouth
Junction, Middlesex County; and Katharine Close, 12, of H.W.
Mountz School, Spring Lake, Monmouth County.
In the history of the spelling bee, no
one sponsored in New Jersey has ever won.
But Aaron hopes to be the first. His mom,
Marcia Sulick, 43, isn't surprised at her son's verbal
prowess. She said Aaron learned to read at age 3 and has
always found it easy.
One night after he first started reading,
he picked up a TV Guide and started to recite names from it.
At age 4, he was reading at an adult level, she
said.
To qualify for the national bee, Aaron
placed first out of 70 students at a regional bee held on
March 14 at Lafayette College in Easton, Pa. Before that, he
beat students in grades 6-8 in a spelling bee at
Phillipsburg Middle School.
According to Carolyn Andrews, Scripps
word list manager for the national and regional spelling
bees, there are about 950 words on the master list for the
championship this year.
Andrews said the competition, which
started in 1925 with nine spellers, has grown into the
largest spelling bee among English-speaking
countries.
"This is the largest bee. We have
spellers coming from many corners of the Earth. It just grew
and grew. It wasn't held during the World War II years, but
it has otherwise steadily grown," she said.
Andrews added that the event is bigger
this year than it was in 2004 because of the addition of
Canadian spellers.
Aaron, meanwhile, has attracted lots of
fans in Phillipsburg, where residents are known for devotion
to their school sports teams. People he's never met have
come up to him to wish him luck.
And his family, including two older
sisters, Alayna, 14, and Arianne, 24, will be cheering him
on this week.
"We have a good-luck ritual," his dad,
Tom Sulick, 46, said. "We put a banner we made for him for
the regional across the doorway and he runs through
it."
Aaron's grandfather, Joe Todaro, 80, said
he's proud that Aaron, an A-plus student, has made it to the
championships.
"Once he said to me, 'Do you think I
could ever become president?' said Todaro. "I told him
anything's possible. There are no accidents. You just have
to prepare yourself."
And preparing seems to be all Aaron has
been doing for several months.
Every day before school, his mom quizzes
him from the study guide called the Paideia (after a Greek
word that means education of a child). And Aaron enunciates
and spells her random selections from categories such as
world religions, politics, food, chemistry and biology.
There's even a section devoted to words used by Edgar Allen
Poe.
Jeanette Gilliland, principal of Andover
Morris, describes Aaron as a dream student who works hard in
the classroom, plays hard on the playground and uses good
manners at all times.
"He's absolutely outstanding," the
principal said. "He's very well-rounded. He's a sportsman.
He's very social. He has plenty of friends. He's not always
sitting down with his nose in a book, like you would expect
a scholar to be."
Gilliland, new to Phillipsburg this
school year, first met Aaron before school one day while he
visited his Aunt Sue -- Andover Morris student assistant Sue
Hinkle.
She was immediately struck by the
politeness of the athletic boy.
"You could tell right away, just by
looking at him -- his manners and his personality say
everything about him," the principal said.
Aaron's spelling bee biography notes
that, in his spare time, he enjoys metal detecting with his
father, along with a host of other interests -- computers,
baseball, football, basketball, hiking, fishing and
collecting sports memorabilia.
Aaron, in the gifted-and-talented program
at his 250-student, grades 3-5 school, is being sponsored by
the Express-Times of Easton, Pa., a sister paper to The
Star-Ledger.
Despite all his disciplined practice,
Aaron still likes to read Harry Potter and the books from
"Lemony Snickets Series of Unfortunate Events." And history
books on war.
"I also like math and social studies. And
I like to get autographs," he adds.
Aaron is excited about a newly purchased
signed photo of baseball great Ted Williams that just
arrived in the mail.
But he's a little nervous about having to
go up to a microphone on the big stage in the ballroom of
the Grand Hyatt Hotel when the judges call 205, his
number.
"There's going to be other champions from
the U.S. and everywhere there -- from Samoa, Guam, the
Virgin Islands and one person from New Zealand," he
said.
He's not too worried about the words
he'll be asked to pronounce and spell. He'll just try his
best at them all.
"They could include any words in here,"
he said, patting his hand coolly on the gigantic book in
front of him. It's a new hardcover copy of the Merriam
Webster Third New International Unabridged Dictionary, which
is 4 inches thick and has 2,662 pages.
"It's the luck of the draw," Aaron
said.
Staff writer Mike Frassinelli contributed to this report.
© 2005 The Star-Ledger. Used by NJ.com with
permission.
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