Hanahan student turns loss into victory in Berkeley Co. spelling bee

MONCKS CORNER, S.C. (WCSC) - A Hanahan Middle School Student found a silver lining to losing last year’s Berkeley County School District Spelling Bee by taking the proverbial gold this year.

Siqi Fang won the 2023 contest Thursday night after correctly spelling the words regurgitate and retinol.

“I knew a lot of the words that were said, but I was still nervous,” Fang said.

While district officials said she breezed through words like rabbinic, vespertine and cyanosis, she said she was motivated by her loss last year when she misspelled the word silver.

“A lot of other people are really good, so I was a little nervous that I would forget something. I practiced… There’s no way I would have gotten those (difficult words) by guessing,” she said.

Berkeley Middle School’s Taylor Harrison finished in second place and Javin Bhajan of Marrington Middle School of the Arts came in third.

These top nine district spellers advance to the regional competion scheduled in March at Charleston Southern University:

• Berkeley Middle – Taylor Harrison and Olivia Nguyen
• Cane Bay Middle – Allen Hagloch
• College Park Middle – Miranda Moody
• Daniel Island School – Alice Liao
• Hanahan Middle – Siqi Fang
• Marrington Middle SOA – Javin Bhajan
• Philip Simmons Middle – Laura Perry
• Sedgefield Middle – Lena Marino

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