John Glenn Spell Bowl Team Wins 19th State Championship

 The John Glenn High School Spell Bowl team won their 19th Indiana Academic Spell Bowl state finals championship this past weekend. They now hold the record for number of spell bowl state championships in the history of all divisions. Spell Bowl Coach Brandt Ayoub says the team was part of division 2 and competed against 4 other schools. He says it was a team goal from the beginning to make it to state.

“John Glenn High School has quite a legacy. I took over for the former coach, this is my first year coaching and he had coached for 29 years and they went to state all 29 of those years. They also won state 18 of those 29 years 6 of the past consecutive years. This year the kids said even though there’s a new coach even though there is that turnover, they did not want to be the team to mess up the record,” said Ayoub.

Ayoub says the overall score is determined by the teams spelling performance.

“We have 10 spellers and each speller spells out 9 words by writing them down. It’s not an out loud competition. Then the next speller goes up and spells the next 9 words. There are 90 words and 90 possible points and then we are just given a score accordingly,” said Ayoub.

Ayoub added without the students this wouldn’t have been possible.

” I really want to deflect all of the attention about our spell bowl team’s history  back to the students. The fact is, there are no shortcuts in spelling. Ultimately they have to write a certain word that they either know or don’t. There are no short cuts, no cheating, no easy ways out of it, and ultimately it just boils down to the hard work,” added Ayoub.