Eighth grader Aron Ekubaselase, who did not miss one single word in the entire schoolwide spelling bee competition, won the 2021 Schoolwide Spelling Bee Champion of The Preuss School UCSD.

Students competed at home with parent supervision after watching a training video and studying a practice word list. Once the competition ended, they had to wait for the results, and after a week, Aron was told that he had won.

“In the middle of my English class, my teacher Philip Ensberg messaged me privately, telling me that I had won the school Spelling Bee competition,” expressed Aron (‘25). “ I didn’t expect to win, I thought that I would come in close or be a runner up.”

Winning the Schoolwide Spelling Bee competition was very meaningful for Aron and it gave him a memorable experience. However, the next steps are going to be even more challenging and hard. Aron will be competing in the annual Countywide Spelling Bee competition, against thirty six other Schoolwide Spelling Bee winners on March 17th, which will take place online, via Zoom webinar.

“I feel surprised and pretty nervous considering that I will be competing against many people in San Diego County. But I also feel excited, as this is an amazing opportunity for me,” stated Aron. “I’m ready to go on and compete at different levels.”

As simple as it seems to spell out a word, there is always that one word that challenges you and stresses you. Even though Aron did a great job at not misspelling any of the words given to him, he did struggle with a specific word.

“Streamlet” was probably one of the easiest ones to spell, but the pronunciation confused me, and it took a bit of time to figure out if it was streamlet or streamlit,” said Aron.

Aron claims to never have had any past experiences with spelling competitions, such as the spelling bee other than in seventh grade, where he misspelled the word “cannonade” in the class selection Spelling Bee. However, even though he did not win the Schoolwide Spelling Bee competition last year, he did come stronger this year and became the champion.

Aron’s English teacher and advisor, Dr. Ensberg, recognizes his achievement: “I am proud to have one of my advisory students in the county competition. That hasn’t happened for me for years, and I am especially excited to see Aron compete this year because he is not only my English student, but my advisory student as well.”

If Aron Ekubaselase wins the county level competition, he will move on to nationals, which takes place in Washington D.C. He currently has to continue to study his practice word list and needs all of the possible support and good vibes, to motivate him to keep on going. This is something challenging Aron is doing, at such a young age. However, he is staying positive and motivated to move on.

“To everyone at Preuss UCSD, I want you to know that I’ll try my best to go as far as I can in the spelling bee competition,” expressed Aron. “As a message to all of my peers, staff and UCSD, I will try my best to represent our school as best as possible.”