You’ve Heard Of Soccer Moms. How About Spelling Bee Dads?

June 1, 2017

A dad’s relationship with his children’s spelling bees can be a bit complicated. Typically, a dad isn’t going to be excited about spelling, because it’s not sports. But, a spelling bee is a chance for his kid to mop the floor with the other kids in schools, which is something that’ll always get a dad’s blood flowing.

Typically, most dads view spelling bees as a sure sign of brilliance (if their kid wins) or stupid and whatever (if their kid does anything BUT win).

Which brings us to the Scripps Spelling Bee.

Do you know what “feuilleton stichomythia” is? Can you pronounce it, right now, reading it out loud, correctly on your first try? Well that’s the word that won the Scripps Spelling Bee in 2014.

The Scripps Spelling Bee, which began on May 31st, is basically the US National Championship of Spelling Bees, and the only reason your dad knows about it is because they air it on ESPN and ESPN2 each year for some reason. Needless to say, the kids that compete in this event are super human spellers. They are tiny little dictionaries that ignored almost everything else in their life in order to spell every obscure word you can think of.

They laugh at the “i before e” rule that you’ve still not 100% mastered. They are Spelling Freaks.

And Spelling Freaks have Spelling Dads.

You see, whenever a dad has a child who is one of the best in the world at something, dad pride comes out in full force. But as they continue to rise to the top, that dad pride turns into dad coaching. This gets you the Earl Woods and the LaVar Balls of the world, obsessive competitors who aim to achieve through the successes of their children. When we see this in professional sports, it makes sense, even if it does rub us the wrong way.

But when you get to the final round of the Scripps Spelling Bee? That’s the only dad you’ll see.

These are dads that realized their kids aren’t going to be “into sports” so instead they go all into coaching them in spelling, grilling them for hours on end. Their dictionaries are worn out. These dads have embraced spelling as a legitimate event, and if their kid loses, it’s the fault of the people who announced the word, as they clearly mispronounced it.

The best example of this can be seen in the movie Spellbound, where the dad of a Scripps finalist actually paid 1,000 people in India to pray for his son to win. That’s some peak competitive dad right there.

But if we think about it, is there much difference between a dad who gets really obsessed with their kid’s spelling career and the dad who goes crazy at their kid’s baseball games at each called strike? Not really. Dads want their kids to succeed, and if they feel like they succeeded a bit in the process, that’s a nice bonus.

Though I’d have to imagine most dads would rather have a star athlete. There’s a lot less dead-air in a football game than a spelling bee.