Monday Profile: West Lowndes 4th grader bests mostly 8th graders to win county spelling bee
Carmen Hairston stepped up to the microphone at the Trotter Convention Center Wednesday, took a deep breath and waited to hear the word that could make her the youngest ever winner of the Scripps Howard Columbus-Lowndes District Spelling Bee.
The West Lowndes fourth-grader, competing against 25 other county students, many of them eighth-graders, had successfully advanced through six rounds to get to the moment and now needed one more correct spelling to defeat her co-finalist, an eighth-grader.