St. Paul's Lutheran School sixth-grader Carter Daily poses with is trophy Monday night after winning the 92nd annual Cullman County Spelling Bee. (W.C. Mann for The Cullman Tribune)
CULLMAN – On Monday evening, Carter Daily, a sixth-grader at St. Paul’s Lutheran School and winner of the inaugural spelling bee at the 2018 Cullman County Fair last fall, won the 92nd annual Cullman County Spelling Bee, after overcoming a seeming first round defeat. In the opening round, he was sent off the stage after judges thought they heard him add a "u" to the word “Slav,” to produce a spelling of “Slauv.” At the end of the round a challenge was lodged and, in a move that Saints fans would appreciate, judges Leah Bolin, Gregory Nicholas, Champ Crocker and Rusty Turner reviewed Daily’s spelling in the video being shot by host Temple Baptist Church. The judges concluded that Daily had indeed spelled the word correctly, and he returned to the stage.
After the rest of the field had been sent to their seats, Daily went one-on-one with Good Hope Middle School sixth-grader Ace Sricklin for several rounds. After Stricklin missed the word “worrisome,” Daily correctly spelled the word “biopsy,” followed by the championship word “prattle.”
This was Daily’s fourth county bee. He told The Tribune afterward, “Honestly, when I first came here, I honestly wasn’t a hundred percent sure I was going to win four years ago. And ever since then, I’ve just been trying my best.”
Daily will represent Cullman County at the 2019 Alabama State Spelling Bee on March 9 at Westwood Baptist Church in Alabaster. A win there would send him to the Scripps National Spelling Bee in National Harbor, Maryland from May 27-30.
Daily concluded, “I was thinking my mom and I are going to be studying a lot!”
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