INDIANAPOLIS - Christians in Indiana (USA) are drawing parallels between spelling champ Elliot Huck, 14, and Eric Liddell, the Olympic runner who refused to compete on Sundays.
Elliot, who advanced to the Scripps National Spelling Bee in 2005 and 2006, will not compete this year, his last year of eligibility. That’s because the Herald-Times, the newspaper sponsoring Bloomington’s regional feed-in bee, scheduled the contest on a Sunday.
Elliot, on his own, decided he would not compete: God commands Christians to keep the Sabbath holy, he said. „If I make exceptions to following God’s rule, even if it is only once, there will be more exceptions that will follow”, he said.
In past years, the Herald-Times held the Bloomington bee on a Saturday. But publisher E. Mayer Malone Jr. said that this year, Sunday March 4, was the only date that fit „several considerations.” Though several citizens offered to help overcome obstacles related to venue (the public library) and filming logistics so that Elliot could compete, Maloney refused.
An eighth-grader missing a spelling bee might be a small thing, but for Elliot’s Herculean effort. As a little guy, Elliot was such a good speller that his friends nicknamed him Spelliot. In fifth grade, he learned to spell more than 26,000 words for the Scripps National Spelling Bee. In 2005, he won the Bloomington bee and went to the Scripps contest in Washington D.C., but failed to pass the written test, which includes words like rijsttafel (an elaborate Indonesian meal).
In 2006, he advanced to nationals again and passed the written test. But this time, he went down in the „lawnmower round”, whose murderous word list is designed to chop the remaining 90-kid field in half before the televised rounds on ESPN. That year, the cutoff was 44 spellers. Elliot was 45th.
As time wound down to this year’s Bloomington bee, Elliot and his family were at peace with the idea that, short of, say, a divinely ordained ice-storm closing the library, Elliot’s spelling career is over. Joyce Huck, Elliot’s mother, said that the Herald-Times had been „generous sponsors” during the family’s two previous trips to the Scripps bee. She doesn’t see the newspaper’s intransigence as religious discrimination so much as simple thoughtlessness: „They figure a lot of things happen on Sundays and who cares?”
Elliot is disappointed but certain he made the right decision. He also hopes people understand the big picture: „My chief purpose in spelling is to glorify God. My chief purpose in not spelling will be to glorify God.” (World)
