Scrabble Players Head to Nationals
Students at the Bridgehampton Child Care and Recreation Center are enhancing their vocabulary and spelling, as well as figuring out new ways to solve problems and work together as a team. They are learning all that while playing one of America’s favorite board games — Scrabble.
Six of the eight budding wordsmiths in the center’s Scrabble Club, all of them Sag Harbor and Bridgehampton School students in fourth or fifth grade, are taking their skills to the North American School Scrabble Championship at Gillette Stadium in Foxboro, Mass., next month. They are still new to the game, and the tournament gives them an opportunity to play against kids they do not know in a competitive setting. They are paying their own way — $600 apiece to cover hotel and travel expenses for the weekend, plus food.
The center hopes to raise $5,000 to help offset the costs. “Reading and literacy are key to our children succeeding and being successful in the future,” said Bonnie Cannon, executive director of the Child Care Center. “Lack of vocabulary — I find not just our kids but all kids, need more. I know when I was a kid, Scrabble was a fun way of learning new words and finding new meanings of words.”
Kathy Hummel, who coaches the Scrabble Club members, has worked for the National Scrabble Association and has been teaching Scrabble to students in Hampton Bays, where she lives, since 2000. She is paid a small stipend for coaching. Along with two other staff members, she will accompany the students to Massachusetts for the Nationals, a two-day, eight-round competition starting April 21.
Players qualify for the championship by attending club, learning unfamiliar words, and practicing strategies that help make great plays, Ms. Hummel said. She gives them vocabulary lists and flashcards as homework. Two-letter words are a main focus, such as “aa,” a type of lava, and “za,” slang for pizza — the unofficial food for Scrabble players in Bridgehampton, Ms. Hummel said with a laugh.
“At this level, especially with this group because they are so new, sometimes they score 100, sometimes they score 200 points.” Say, for example, they have the letters C-H-A-R-M-E-D on their rack. It is age-appropriate, she said, that they might only see they have the tiles to spell “arm,” maybe “harm.” She will encourage them not only to find a longer word, but to look for suffixes and prefixes — “front and back hooks.”
“I’m just happy they find the best play they can at the time,” she said. Scrabble brings children of this generation back to the basics. For one thing, it is tactile, Ms. Hummel pointed out. “It’s a videogame. You have to touch the tiles. Move them around. You have to use a pencil to write down the score. It keeps them in the moment. You have to be present. . . . The thing about Scrabble, in general, is there’s a luck factor that’s involved. You can learn all the words you want; but if you don’t get the letters to make them. . . .”
She tells the children the story of Joe Edley, the only person to have won the adult National Scrabble Championship three times, who lost 11 out of 13 rounds in one tournament, and hung the scorecard on his wall as a reminder. “When the kids get frustrated, I try to explain to them even the experts get racks where there is nothing.” She said she would rather the children be good sports and have fun than win.
The child care center is a not-for-profit organization, for the most part serving, though not limited to, the African-American and growing immigrant populations in Bridgehampton and surrounding communities. Its Scrabble club began in October, with practice every Monday night. The members are among more than a million students in over 20,000 schools nationwide playing organized Scrabble games.
Hasbro, the company that makes the game, and the National Scrabble Association launched the National School Scrabble Program, for fourth through eighth graders, in 1991. It has been credited with improving a wide range of skills that will help children far beyond the game itself.
Club members will also take part in a tournament in Ridgefield, Conn., this weekend, as well as games against Hampton Bays students in early April, to prep for the national tournament.
Contributions to help with their travel and other expenses can be made payable to the Bridgehampton Child Care and Recreation Center. Students would need the money by April 15. Next year Ms. Hummel plans to bring in adult players to give the students even more experience. Those interested had best brush up on their vocabulary.
Corrections: Joe Edley lost 11 of 13 rounds once, not 14 out 15 as originally reported. Also, this weekend's tournament is in Ridgefield, not Ridgewood.