ORWIGSBURG - The 58th annual Republican-Herald Regional Spelling Bee will challenge 51 students from 16 school districts Saturday.
The event begins at 10 a.m. in the Blue Mountain High School auditorium and is free and open to the public.
The student spellers are in grades five through eight and represent 11 public schools and five Catholic schools. The spellers have already won a spelling competition in their own school. The age limit is 15.
Of the 51 spellers, 27 will be competing in The Republican-Herald Regional Spelling Bee for the first time.
There will be 19 boys and 32 girls. One is 15 years old; seven are 14; 15 are 13; 17 are 12; eight are 11 and three are 10.
Among those competing this year are two siblings from the Pottsville Area School District, Alyssa DeLeon, 11, fifth grade, and Aaron DeLeon, 12, sixth grade, children of Alvin and Jodi DeLeon, Port Carbon.
This is Alyssa's first year competing while Aaron participated in the 2012 Regional Spelling Bee.
Coaching them is Karen Durkin, who said that the siblings are among the seven students picked from the school district, of which one is an alternate.
The number of students participating from a school district depends on the population. The school district tests to select the students in October, then the students start staying after school to practice in November.
"You have a lot of siblings who do the spelling bee over the years but usually the older sibling already cycled through," Durkin said Tuesday. "That's what's kind of neat about having a brother and sister in the same year. They both made our spelling team as fifth-graders."
Durkin said that their older brother, Chey Jones, who is currently a student at the high school, also participated in the spelling bee.
"All of those children have been very good at this," she said. "They're all nice kids and good students."
While Durkin said she can't predict how the students will do, she said that each has different goals and she hopes that they're happy with their individual results.
Another student returning this year, who is a previous top speller from the North Schuylkill School District, is Gena Williams, 13, eighth grade, daughter of Melissa and Bruce Williams, Frackville.
According to Janet Joyce, director of marketing and community services for The Republican-Herald, Williams placed second as a fifth-grader in 2010, sixth as a sixth-grader in 2011 and second as a seventh-grader in 2012.
This will be the last year Williams qualifies to be in the spelling bee.
The winner of the bee will receive a week's all-expense paid trip to Washington, D.C., for themselves and one parent, courtesy of The Republican-Herald, to compete in the Scripps National Spelling Bee from May 28 to 30 against the nation's best young spellers.
Prizes for the regional bee have been sponsored by Hidden River Credit Union, J. Bertolet Volkswagen, Dairy Queen, De'Angelo's, Encyclopedia Britannica, Fairlane Village mall, First National Bank of Minersville, Francesco's Ristorante, Hexco Academic, Merriam-Webster, Samuel Louis Sugarman, Schuylkill Mall, Sears and Tuson's TV & Appliances.
While prizes were previously awarded to the top five spellers, this year if four spellers are in the final round and three spell out, there would be one champion and three second-place runners-up who receive prizes.
If two spellers are in the final round, there would be one winner and one runner-up that would receive a prize.
These new rules are to keep in compliance with the rules set forth by the Scripps National Spelling Bee.