Can You Spell Perspicacious?

Know a great kid who made Eagle Scout or a team that earned top honors? They may be our next Patch Whiz Kid honoree.

Each week, Brookfield Patch will feature individual kids, youth groups or teams that wow us with their accomplishments. Whether their achievement be in academics, athletics, music, arts, community service, scouting or any other category, we want to hear about these amazing youth.

Nominate a worthy person or group in our comment box below or e-mail the information to Editor Lisa Sink.

And now for our Whiz Kid this week ... it's the spelling bee team at (with an assist from the team):

Whiz Kids: Kalina Zhong, Cassidy Mazurek, Amritha Jayashankar, Cassie Smith and Kate Charnesky

Accomplishment: At a Regional Spelling Bee on Feb. 15 with seven area school districts competing, Elmbrook's two middle schools nabbed all three slots that advance to the Badger State Spelling Bee on March 25. Kalina Zhong, an eighth grader at Wisconsin Hills, took first place and will compete at state. Cassidy Mazurek, a seventh grader at Wisconsin Hills, will serve as the first alternate. And Kate Charnesky, from the Pilgrim Park Middle School spelling team, is the second alternate.

Lynn Bartos, coordinator of the Wisconsin Hills team, said her team was happy with the results and is busy preparing for the state competition in Madison. 

"They're all very excited for one another," said Bartos, a speech and language pathologist. "I think they were all very well prepared."

The bees start at the classroom level, where each class advances its top spellers, who then compete at the building level to be on the team that competes at regionals. The winning words spelled to go to regionals were A-B-R-A-C-A-D-A-B-R-A (Cassie), U-V-U-L-A (Cassidy) and E-L-U-C-I-D-A-T-E (Kalina).

Competing Feb. 15 were teams from Elmbrook, Hamilton, North Lake, Pewaukee, Richmond, Shorewood and Stone Bank. 

Key to the Whiz Kids' awesomeness: study, study, study. Team members pored over spelling study lists (see web links to the lower right of this story). Could gender be another key — where are the boys? Last year, Wisconsin Hills' team had one male student, Bartos said. Better luck next year, guys!

Oh, and by the way, perspicacious means perceptive. But it's much harder to spell.