Big word trips up Columbia Falls speller

A local spelling whiz wound up in a four-way tie for second in the state spelling bee.

If he were going to get tripped up in the state spelling bee, Grant Getts had hoped for a pretty strange word.

He got "icosahedron."

"I told Mom ahead of time that if I was going to go out, I wanted the hardest word in the whole English language," Getts said. "(Icosahedron) didn't really qualify, but I did really good so that's OK."

The seldom heard word describes a a polyhedron having 20 faces. But Getts substituted an "e" for the "a," locking him into a four-way tie for second place at the Treasure State Spelling Bee April 2.

The Columbia Falls eighth-grader, who is 13, had previously been top speller at his school and third-place finisher at the Flathead County Spelling Bee.

A Clyde Park eighth-grader, Jack Ausick, went on to spell two more words correctly in the sixth round to take this year's state spelling laurels.

Getts competed alongside his fellow Flathead County qualifiers up through the fourth round, when county winner Joe McGlenn and second-place finisher Hunter Lapp went out on missed words.

"I'd get nervous while I was waiting" on the gym floor as, one by one, the 69 state competitors took their turns at the microphone. "Then when I walked up to the mic, I'd be fine."

Getts said there were about 45 competitors left after the first two rounds, 21 after the third round, 11 after the fourth. By the end of the fifth, Getts was one of the five who advanced to the sixth round. Although eighth-graders captured the top two spots, he said fifth-graders were just as much in the hunt as anyone.

As the 2 1/2-hour competition ground on, Getts said he got less tense.

"I knew I was better than most of the kids," he said. "I just didn't want to get a word I didn't know."

The son of Andy and Mary Ellen Getts and the oldest of five kids, Grant traveled to the state bee with his mom, three sisters and a brother. His dad would have come if it had not been for work.

He admits he typically gets nervous but doesn't show it. It helped, this time, that the words generally were pretty easy, he said..

"Just those last two were hard."

Already a basketball, soccer and tennis player, a pianist, clarinetist and now a jazz-band saxophonist who is enrolled in several of the junior high's advanced academic courses, Getts described his favorite part of the state spelling bee: "Getting second."

But he also distinctly recalled the most stressful part of the day:

"All the rounds before that."

Reporter Nancy Kimball can be reached at 758-4483 or by e-mail at nkimball@dailyinterlake.com