Portales sixth-grader heads to national bee

ALBUQUERQUE - A Portales student will represent the Land of Enchantment in the 2019 National Spanish Spelling Bee this summer after finishing as the runner up in the New Mexico State Spanish Spelling Bee last weekend.

Fernando Gomez Jr., a sixth grader at Lindsay Steiner Elementary, correctly spelled "quirógrafo," a medical term for a type of scan, to take second place in the Spanish spelling bee which featured 33 students from across the state.

Jacqueline Duran, a fifth and sixth grade dual language teacher in Portales and Fernando's sponsor for the event, said the four-hour long bee went 33 rounds and the students actually went through the event's entire word list, forcing organizers to start using words from a "mystery list," with Fernando and eventual winner Maxamilliano Hultsch Martinez from Deming facing off for five or six rounds.

Fernando told The News that since the local Spanish spelling bee in February, he studied for an hour a day to prepare for the state bee.

Fernando said now that he has learned all of the words on the word list for the bee, he will now cut back to studying about once a week until it gets closer to the July 13 bee, where he will be competing against the winners and runners up from the other state bees.

A dual language student learning Spanish as his second language, Fernando said he prefers Spanish to English and he likes competing in the bees because he enjoys spelling the words.