On Thursday, Feb. 29, McIntosh hosted the ABCs of McIntosh, a Spelling Bee and art auction meant to raise funds for senior scholarships. The art auction was a silent auction with art by McIntosh students, the money from that going back to the students.
The Spelling Bee was held from 7 pm- 8 pm. The spelling bee had eight teams consisting of people from the McIntosh Hall of Fame, Teachers, and Students. With a Jeopardy-style spelling bee, with buzzers to ring in to answer and whiteboards to write the answer on. They got donations from several businesses making it so that they could get a better system.
“We had $500 in donations from businesses. We had a business and if you’ve seen a program, I believe it’s in the program Signos which I believe is a temporary attempt service type of business. They donated $300 for the awards that were given to the three-member winning team. The teacher received $100. The student on the winning team received $100 And then the notable on the winning team had $100 donated to their selected charity. And so Signos gave us the $300 to do that. Lizard Thicket donated $200 for us to purchase a buzzer system,” Lisa Fine, Board member of Chiefs Foundation and former MHS principal, said.
There was confusion during the event on the buzzers and if the buzzers were not working the best according to Leon Hammond, Athletic Director and participant.
“I think one of the things was the buzzers. They weren’t kind of clear as far as the some of the times when somebody got it wrong. Do you wait for him to reread it? Or do you just buzz in immediately? So I think that’s something that could be cleared up. But also just I think some of the buzzers, [the organizers] did a good job getting them. I don’t know how well they worked for everybody because they had to be a certain distance away from the judge’s table. So that may have affected some people buzzing in,” Hammond said.
The participants did have fun and were competitive.
All of the celebrity guests were really cool. Actually, they were great to work with, they sat around at the end to talk to people.”
— Leon Hammond
“Mr. Raman is the individual I work with on my team, he was really cool, being a football fan. It’s good to work with a person who played football but who was still involved in it. All of the celebrity guests were really cool. Actually, they were great to work with, they sat around at the end to talk to people. I had Brooklyn Allen on my team. She was great to work with, even though we were giving her a hard time she was still fun to work with and they got to interact with them. Being competitive and wanting to win, but we did not win. We did get points and got on the board. My ultimate goal was to be Coach Smith because he got no points. So that made me happy but that’s the competitive me but I definitely had a good time doing it,” Hammond said.
There was also an art auction that happened, they had student artists submit the art they made in art class and it was sold, a partition of the money went to the students while most of it went to the organization.
“There were 24 pieces of art by 21 artists, we had one student to submit it three pieces of art, and another student who submitted two pieces of art.” Fine said.
There were two types of awards in the auction, the People’s Choice, won by Sydney Sena, and Best in Show, won by Sarah Arriola.
“Sydney’s [artwork] was called Purple Urgent and the people’s choice award was given by people casting votes for their favorite piece of art when they walk through the art auction. Every person received a token and then there were boxes to collect the tokens. Sydney’s received the largest quantity of tokens, so that’s how she won people’s choice,” Fine said.
According to Fine, the event earned the foundation $920 in total and the money earned from the event goes to the foundation to help fund college for McIntosh students.
“The students receive 20% and the foundation received 80% which is where we earned the bulk of the money from the art auction. So $740 would that be $180 went back to students,” Fine said.
