MILWAUKEE — Aidyn Billen may not have walked off stage with a trophy at the 2024 Milwaukee Public Schools Spelling Bee but that didn’t stop him from feeling proud on Saturday.
“My goal was to get top five, and I did just that,” he said “To just come here, represent and I feel like I represented Bethune good.”
RELATED: 2024 MPS Spelling Bee Finals: Meet the winners
For the 7th grader, the spelling bee wasn’t just about winning or losing but a chance to uplift others. In a room full of competitors his encouragement of his peers was one of the most enthusiastic both on stage and off.
“I wanted to do it because I knew there were words on there that I didn’t know how to spell,” Billen said. “So to see the competition being able to spell the words so easily it just showed me that this was going to be tough.”
At Vincent High School Saturday the good character and humility at MPS’ Spelling Bee didn’t end with Billen.
Victoria Quirk, who went from alternate to the first-place winner, told TMJ4’s Tahleel Mohieldin that she too was inspired by the encouragement of others.
“It kind of felt like we were all clapping for each other,” Quirk explained. “It was really nice.”
It was a spelling bee where the most important word for Billen and many of his peers seemed to be sportsmanship.
Meet some of the winners from the first three rounds here.
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