Oceansider is Long Island Spelling Bee champ

Dean Creedon, a fifth grader from Oaks School 3 in Oceanside, became the champion of the Long Island Regional Spelling Bee last Sunday.

“It felt really surprising [to win], because on every word I was wondering if I spelled it correctly or not,” Dean, 10, said. “For the second that it took them to either ring the bell [for a wrong answer] or say, ‘That is correct,’ I was nervous.”

Dean has been practicing every night for weeks with his father, Shawn, who is a former Long Island Spelling Bee contender. Shawn competed back when he was in school in Greenlawn and came in second.

“I told him he had a long way to go. ‘If you want to beat your dad, you’re going to have to come in first,’” Shawn said. “And he set his sights to it and did it.”

Dean’s winning word was mordacious, which means biting or given to biting. It was not one of the hundreds of words that Dean and his father had been practicing.

“I just worked through all of the sounds of the word and used the rules for Latin,” said Dean. “Like the ‘sh’ sound at the end of the word is spelled ‘c-i-o-u-s.’”

This was not Dean’s first competition. He made it to the regional spelling bee last year and placed ninth. “He came in ninth place last year and really set his sights on winning it this year,” his father said. “It was great to see him realize his dream.”

Shawn said that, in the days before the spelling bee, he went over a list of 1,157 words with his son. Out of all of those, Dean only spelled two incorrectly.

In addition to practicing words, Dean is also a voracious reader, his father said, which he believes contributes to his spelling skills. He is also preparing to earn his brown belt in karate next week.

Dean defeated 105 students in grades 4 through 8, who came from all over Nassau and Suffolk counties. For winning, Dean earned a $100 savings bond and a copy of the Webster’s unabridged International Dictionary.

He is one of 277 winners from around the country who will be competing at the Scripps National Spelling Bee in Washington, D.C. starting on May 30. He will be competing for the top prize of $30,000 cash and much more.

Dean said he is both excited and nervous for the national competition, which will be aired on ESPN and ESPN2. There are books gear towards the Scripps bee that have about 10,000 words to study, Shawn said, so he plans to do that with his son. Dean agrees, and plans to keep on doing what has seemed to work well for him so far.

“I’ll just study the way I was studying before, and just try to study the more advanced rules,” he said.