Winners of first Spanish Language Festival at UVa-Wise announced

Rye Cove High School swept most categories in the first Spanish Language Festival at The University of Virginia’s College at Wise on April 25.

The Scott County school emerged as the winner of the Spanish Bowl, a competition pitting teams of three students in a vocabulary scavenger hunt, a word scramble, a memory game in which students matched all 22 presidents of Latin America and Spain to flags representing those countries, and a trivia round featuring cultural, grammar and vocabulary questions.

The Rye Cove team of Danielle Fields, Mindy Kern and Spencer Tabor bested neighboring Gate City High’s Josh Adkins, Josh Hensley and Nathan McConnell and Wise County’s J.J. Kelly High team of Kaitlin Beth Masters, Chelsea Polly and Nooreen Reza in the Spanish Bowl.

Individual students competed in the categories of prose recitation, poetry recitation and poster art. The prose and poetry competitions were organized much like forensics competitions. The students were divided into two levels for the competition. One level was for students who had taken Spanish I and II and another level was for students who were enrolled in Spanish III and IV.

Christel Starnes of Rye Cove High won the Prose I competition while classmate Daniel Townsend won first place in Prose II.

Dylan Statzer of Rye Cove won first place in the Poetry I category and Miranda Jessee, also from Rye Cove, won first in Poetry II.

Shawn Campbell of J.J. Kelly High won in the Poster Art category.

“We were absolutely delighted with the turnout and level of preparation by all of the students who participated,” said Jessica Williams, Spanish instructor at UVa-Wise and coordinator of the event. “We look forward to next year’s competition.”

The event was sponsored by the Spanish Language Division of the Department of Language and Literature at UVa-Wise and Sigma Delta Pi, the National Spanish Honors Society.

For more information, contact the Office of College Relations at 276-328-0130.

Team Rye Cove

                                                                                                     Posted April 30, 2009