POMEROY — Austin Lute, an 8th grader at Eastern Elementary, is Meigs County’s spelling champion.

Lute emerged the winner in competition with 35 students representing Eastern, Southern and Meigs schools in the annual Meigs County Spelling Bee held at the Meigs Middle School. Runner-up was Macey Hayman, 7th grader from Meigs Middle School.

Mike Gerlach, a retired teacher, was the pronouncer for the Bee with the judges being the local superintendents, Rick Edwards of Eastern, Bill Buckley of Meigs, and Tony Deem of Southern. Parents and friends packed the Middle School auditorium to witness the students’ achievements.

In the first round nearly half went down after misspelling a word, and at the end of the second round only 10 remained in the competition. The third round led to five still in the running and it took only a few more rounds to trim the figure to two who remained competitive through several rounds as they strived to spell a word the other misspelled, and moved on to spell another word to take the championship.

It came down to “percussion.” Hayman misspelled the word, which then passed to Lute who spelled it right and went on to spell the next word, “replenish” correctly for the win.

Kim Allen, the talented and gifted coordinator for Meigs County programs, presented trophies to the winners. On hand to congratulate the winners was John Costanzo, superintendent of the Athens-Meigs Educational Service Center.