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WASHINGTON, Dec. 14 (AP) — When Corrie Loeffler was in elementary school, she scribbled in a scrapbook her highly unusual dream job: director of the Scripps National Spelling Bee.
That dream came true Wednesday for Loeffler, 40, a former speller and longtime Bee employee who was announced as the game’s third executive director in the past two years.
“There aren’t many people who can say they have to do something they wanted to do as a kid, especially with a weird, unique position,” Loeffler told The Associated Press ahead of the announcement. “I’m very happy about that.”
Loeffler succeeds J. Michael Durnil, a seasoned nonprofit leader who directed the world’s preeminent spelling bee during an eventful 20-month period and resigned last month due to family health concerns.
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The Bees started in 1925 and were led from 1998 to 2020 by 1981 champion Paige Kimble. Loeffler, who competed in bee competitions from 1994 to 1996, finishing fifth in 1995, joined the team in 2006 and has held several leadership roles.
Cincinnati-based Scripps scoured the country for a successor to Kimble — but not this time. Loeffler was immediately promoted to interim director, with a start date of January 3 for her permanent job.
Her older brother, Paul Loeffler, who competed in 1990 and is a longtime TV analyst for the Bees, called his sister the “ideal keeper” of the game.
“She has a firm grasp of the spirit that has driven it for almost a century,” he said. “Her understanding of the minds of champion spellers is balanced by her empathy for those who are disappointed when the bell rings.”
After the 2020 Bee was canceled due to COVID-19, Durnil took over. He officiated a largely virtual contest in 2021, with a limited live final at Walt Disney World, and brought the bees back this year to its regular venue, the convention center outside Washington.
However, the 2022 edition is still downsized, partly for financial reasons — the Bees have lost a net 47 regional sponsors during the pandemic — but mostly because Durnil canceled the wild-card program that essentially allowed spellers to play in the Nationwide buys a place in the final.
Loeffler said there are no plans to bring back the wild card. As for financial support, Scripps said it has about 200 regional sponsors in 2023, up from 198 this year.
Loeffler said maintaining and enhancing the in-person Bee Week experience for finalists who win at the school and district levels is her top priority. That was the view she gained from her disappointment after losing in the second round in 1996, her final year of qualification.
“No matter how well you perform in the competition, Bee Week will change your life,” Loeffler said. “I’ve never won a competition. That’s not what I mean. It’s about everything you learn from competing and the way it makes you see the world.”
2009 winner Dr Kavya Shivashankar, who served on the panel that chose the words for bees, commended her appointment.
“She’s a very passionate person, and when she sees all the spellers, she’s very happy,” Shivashankar said. “During all the Bee Week activities, it was clear that she genuinely cared about them and had everyone’s best interests at heart.”
The Bee introduced the Lightning Round tiebreaker after four draws in the 2010s, including an eight-way draw in 2019, when Scripps ran out of words difficult enough to challenge the deep field of spelling. After that failure, Scripps also diversified its word board by adding more recent ex-spellers.
Loeffler said the tiebreaker will be tweaked but will remain in place. She also said spellers would continue to be asked multiple-choice vocabulary questions on stage, a much-criticized new element she called key to the bee’s educational mission.
“I love that the on-stage version of the word sense test draws attention in a way that just behind the scenes can’t,” Loeffler said. (AP)
(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from a Syndicated News feed, the content body may not have been modified or edited by LatestLY staff)
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