Titus Kottwitz believes that being in a familiar environment is an advantage when it comes to this year’s Scripps National Spelling Bee.
Titus, who will be an eighth-grader at Trenton Middle School this fall, is preparing to compete in the preliminary round of the national bee this week after winning the Grundy County Spelling Bee by spelling the word “cymbals” and the Northwest Missouri Regional Spelling Bee by correctly spelling the word “volition.”
While in a “normal” year Titus would be traveling to Washington D.C. to stand on the stage with multiple other regional winners, the COVID-19 pandemic forced the organizers of the national bee to set up a system of preliminaries. It will consist of three rounds of virtual competition: preliminaries, quarterfinals and semifinals, with those who make it past the semifinals then competing in the finals in person. The top 10 to 12 competitors will compete in the finals at the ESPN Wide World of Sports Complex at Walt Disney World Resort on July 8. The finals will air on ESPN 2 during prime time.
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Titus will begin his trek to the finals this week, competing on Saturday, June 12 in a preliminary. He will be participating through a live stream at Trenton Middle School, where he will be proctored by TMS Principal Daniel Gott. The preliminaries will air on ESPN 3 from 9 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.
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Titus Kottwitz preparing for the spelling bee.
Even though the setting has changed from past years, Titus says being in a familiar environment is helping him be less nervous about the competition.
When he spoke to the Rotary Club after winning regionals, he said when he is in competition and is given a word he tries to determine if it’s one he has heard previously. If he hasn’t, then he asks for the definition as well as the origin of the word.
Titus said he has been preparing for the upcoming spelling bee by practicing word lists with his brother, Malachi Kottwitz, who won first place in the fifth-grade competition at TMS, as well as by reading a lot.
“This year I hope to make it past preliminaries,” said Titus. In fifth grade he did not make it to regionals, so he hopes to make it into further rounds this year.
Titus is being sponsored in the national competition by the Mosaic Life Care Foundation in St. Joseph.