Cayman Brac students win Spelling Bee

Two young ladies, Tabitha Giscombe and Suwayne Young-Watson, from Layman E. Scott Snr High School on Cayman Brac, took first and second place respectively at this year’s Spelling Bee competition, with a draw for third place between Diego Myles from Calvary Baptist Christian Academy and Garson Gardiner from John Gray High School.

This year’s slightly scaled down event took place last Wednesday at the Lion’s Centre Hall and was the 37th Annual Lion's Club of Grand Cayman Secondary Spelling Bee competition, which has partnered with the Department of Education Services for the past 22 years.

The competition welcomes students from public and private secondary schools across the Cayman Islands and participating schools this year were Clifton Hunter High School, John Gray High School, Layman E. Scott Snr. High School, Calvary Baptist Christian Academy and Cayman International School.

Master of ceremonies for the occasion, Gloria Bell, Acting Customer Services Manager Department of Education Services, said usually they had around 12 schools competing every year. This year, which had obviously been an abnormal year, only saw 11 students participating from five schools. Initially they had six schools with 13 competitors but two students and one school had to withdraw. Never-the-less, Ms Bell said she thanked God for the resilience of the schools and the students who managed to participate in this difficult year. She outlined that schools usually had their own competitions so they could choose who the finalists for this competition would be. The first prize winner this year received a laptop, along with medals, a cup and certificates and a gift basket from the DOT, while the runners up got tablets as well as medals, cups and certificates. Mr Elroy Bryan, Senior School Improvement Officer for Special Needs with the DES, gave a welcome speech and said that all participants were winners to get thus far in the competition.