Delroy Fong poses with the championship trophy shortly after he won the Gleaner's Spelling Bee title for St Andrew.

At almost 9:30 a.m. yesterday, Delroy Fong was fitted with the number '1' as he stood to compete in the St Andrew finals of The Gleaner's Children's Own Spelling Bee competition. At the end of the day, he was still number one.

A coincidence maybe, but his win was no fluke. Just the result of his involvement in a multi-faceted programme under the supervision of coach, the Reverend Glen Archer.

The winning coach, who sat proudly and watched as six of his spellers advanced to the very top spots, spoke a little about the programme.

"There are many sides to it. I look at the child's personality, eating habits, even a good night's sleep before the final. I insist on certain principles in the final," Archer said yesterday at the head offices of The Gleaner Company Limited where the finals were held.

Delroy seemed to adhere to these principles and defers totally to his coach.

"It depends on how my coach tells me to do it, because I'm actually entering the national finals for the first time, so I can't do it without him," the 13-year-old Ardenne High speller said.

schoolwork second

Having entered the competition three times before, placing 10th, fourth and fifth, Delroy says his schoolwork sometimes takes a back seat to spelling.

"I don't regret it because I know if I do my best in everything, there will be something very rewarding for me in the end. So I don't regret it. Even if it draws me back with my schoolwork, I still don't regret it."

Why would he, when the most challenging word he was asked to spell yesterday - O-L-E-A-C-E-O-U-S - was not that big a deal?

"(Reverend Archer) taught me how to spell those words, so it wasn't actually hard," he said, again deferring to the winning coach who has 19 spellers from three parishes in this year's competition.

Asked how he does it, Rev Archer explained that there was much strategy in his approach.

"They travel to me three times per week and sometimes I go to their school for personalised training. And after training each evening, I spend time dealing with each speller individually so I give a comment on each speller - what is going well, what is not going so well with them.

"So it's personalised ... . We look at every single word, we look at the use of words," he disclosed.

tennesia.malcolm@gleanerjm.com