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STANFORD — Lincoln County Middle School’s Eli Brummett-Pleasants established himself as one of the area’s leading young men of letters by outspelling other stellar spellers in the annual Lincoln County Spelling Bee.

The Feb. 5 county bee featured spelling champions from Lincoln’s five elementary schools and Lincoln County Middle School, with two spellers representing each school on the stage of the Stuart Underwood Auditorium.

Brummett-Pleasants, an eighth-grade student at LCMS, secured his win by successfully spelling the word “clogging” to defeat runner-up Piper Kubiak, a fifth-grade student at Highland Elementary School.

After Kubiak misspelled the word “taboo,” Brummett-Pleasants gave the correct spelling. To win, he then had to spell another word to end the bee, and “clogging” was that word.

This year’s bee went six rounds with 41 words used.

Miranda Brown, representative of the Lincoln County Farm Bureau Federation, presented Brummett-Pleasants with his first-place trophy and certificate and Kubiak with her second-place awards.

Brummett-Pleasants will now represent Lincoln County at the Kentucky Derby Festival Spelling Bee in Louisville in March.

The Spelling Bee was sponsored by the Lincoln County Farm Bureau Federation.

The county Spelling Bee participants, by school, were:

Crab Orchard Elementary School – Mia Bodner and Etta Williams;

Highland Elementary School – Piper Kubiak and Beylah Dowell;

Hustonville Elementary School – Payton Hargis and Nikki Woodrum;

Lincoln County Middle School – Eli Brummett-Pleasants and Kendall Smith;

Stanford Elementary School –  Jansen Martin and William Asher; and

Waynesburg Elementary School – Miley Snow and Mason McGuffey.