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PHCC Team Wins Chamber Spelling Bee

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By Carl  Orth | The Suncoast News

Published: August 30, 2008

NEW PORT RICHEY - The Pasco-Hernando Community College team certainly was not lachrymose about winning the annual West Pasco Chamber of Commerce Ambassadors Scholarship Spelling Bee.

The jubilant winners correctly spelled lachrymose - which means weepy, sad or tearful - to walk away with the top prize at the recent Chamber of Commerce-sponsored event.

New Port Richey Rotary Club claimed second place while The Suncoast News/Tampa Tribune team finished in a nine-team tie at third.

The third-place finishers were tripped up by funambulist, a word the spelling bee's longtime moderator, West Pasco attorney Al Torrence, has used in the past to quickly winnow the contest's field in the third and final round. A funambulist is a tight-rope walker.

Torrence is an emeritus member of the board of directors of the Pasco Education Foundation. The foundation's Take Stock in Children Scholarship program is the beneficiary of the spelling contest, held at Spartan Manor.

The best theme award went to Hernando-Pasco Hospice and HPH Homecare. Apollo Window Tinting was deemed the team with the most spirit.

More than 30 teams competed, according to Sandra Quinlisk, the chamber's events and marketing coordinator.

The victorious PHCC team members were Barbara Booker, Ana Lopez, Elaine Cooksey and Kay McKamy.

Rotary Club of Keystone Sunrise members were among those having a blast, club publicist Ginny Pierce reports.

Club president Tina Shelton led the large contingent that made it into the second of three rounds.

"Spending all of (our) bribes, (we) went out with a buzz and look forward to next year," Pierce commented.

In the first to rounds of the contest a team can use a bribe - mock $20 bill - to buy its way back into competition after misspelling a word. Others in the Rotary group were Kevin Thomas, Angel Cook, Shawn Fawcett, Gail Fawcett, Kelly Armstrong, Marie Casanova; Carol Olds, Greg Crockett and honorary member Commissioner Jack Mariano.

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