{"id":285251,"date":"2026-05-26T21:38:07","date_gmt":"2026-05-26T21:38:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/285251\/"},"modified":"2026-05-26T21:38:07","modified_gmt":"2026-05-26T21:38:07","slug":"collier-lee-county-students-shine-on-national-spelling-stage-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/285251\/","title":{"rendered":"Collier, Lee County students shine on national spelling stage | News"},"content":{"rendered":"

WASHINGTON D.C. – Two Southwest Florida students are still in the running at the Scripps National Spelling Bee<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Nixon Diveley, a seventh grader at Pine Ridge Middle School in Collier County, and Nihal\u00a0Gelli, a seventh grader at Cypress Lake Middle School in Lee County, both made it through the first two preliminary rounds Tuesday in Washington, D.C.<\/p>\n

Diveley said the day started early, with a shuttle ride to Constitution Hall before he had to wait through dozens of other spellers.<\/p>\n

\"spell2.jpg\"<\/p>\n

\u201cWatching 48 other contestants go before me was kind of nerve-racking, because I watched a bunch of them get it wrong,\u201d Diveley said. \u201cAnd I was like, what if that happens? And it was my turn and I got it right.\u201d<\/p>\n

His first word was \u201cpneumatocyst.\u201d<\/p>\n

Diveley said he had seen the word before, which helped settle him down. The vocabulary question that followed was tougher, but he said he was able to narrow it down and get it right.<\/p>\n

\"spell.jpg\"<\/p>\n

Gelli also advanced through the first two rounds. His spelling word was \u201cvillanelle,\u201d a type of poem. His vocabulary word was \u201charrowing.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI was pretty nervous because I’m on national TV,\u201d Gelli said. \u201cBut I was just focusing on the judges.\u201d<\/p>\n

Both students now move on to the written portion of the preliminaries, a 30-question test with 24 spelling questions and six vocabulary questions. The test helps narrow the field to about 100 quarterfinalists.<\/p>\n

For Diveley, getting to nationals came after six weeks of heavy preparation<\/a>. He said he studied official word lists for about an hour a day, sometimes two or three hours, and also worked with a spelling tutor once a week.<\/p>\n

The preparation made him feel more ready than he did at the Collier County bee.<\/p>\n

\u201cDefinitely more prepared than I felt at the regionals,\u201d Diveley said. \u201cWith the regionals, I was just kind of winging it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"spell4.jpg\"<\/p>\n

Gelli said he planned to keep preparing by studying roots and suffixes from different languages.<\/p>\n

\u201cRoots are probably just going to help me out the most,\u201d Gelli said.<\/p>\n

The Scripps National Spelling Bee quarterfinals are scheduled for Wednesday. The finals are set for Thursday night.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WASHINGTON D.C. – Two Southwest Florida students are still in the running at the Scripps National Spelling Bee.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":285252,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[209,211,210,5926,69121,22872,356,121037,1521,6413,53853],"class_list":["post-285251","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cape-coral","tag-cape-coral","tag-cape-coral-headlines","tag-cape-coral-news","tag-collier-county","tag-cypress-lake-middle-school","tag-d-c","tag-lee-county","tag-pine-ridge-middle-school","tag-southwest-florida","tag-washington","tag-washington-d-c"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/285251","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=285251"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/285251\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/285252"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=285251"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=285251"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=285251"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}