Mill Creek Middle eighth-grader wins Catawba County Schools spelling bee

By John Bailey, Hickory Daily Record

Amare Readen | Robert Reed Photo

You never know what you might learn from television.

Mill Creek Middle’s Amare Rearden has seen enough commercials advertising medicine for colds and the flu so when he was asked to spell “influenza,” he wasn’t worried.

He took a breath and spelled it correctly. It left the eighth-grader as the final student standing in the eighth round of the Catawba County Schools Spelling Bee.

Then, he spelled the word “parfait” to wrap up the competition as the 2017-18 champion, beating out 20 other individual elementary and middle school winners from the district.