St. Peter's recognizes 'bee' winners

FALLBROOK — St. Peter’s Catholic School recently held two multi-grade-level competitions testing students’ knowledge of geography and spelling. Sophia Santiago, a fifth-grader, went the distance and won the Geography Bee with the following question: “The Bab el Mandeb, a strait between the Arabian Peninsula and the Horn of Africa, connects the Gulf of Aden to which body of water?” Her winning answer was “The Red Sea.”

Andrew Donnelly, an eighth-grader, outlasted his opponents by correctly spelling “meticulous,” which means “very careful; precise,” to became the school Spelling Bee champion.

Both Santiago and Donnelly first competed in preliminary rounds within their grade levels. Having won those rounds, both came out swinging against the other grade level winners in the final rounds to claim the Geography Bee and Spelling Bee titles.