VALDOSTA – A Lowndes Middle School student has won the regional spelling bee and will now move onto state competition.

Henry Corbitt made the trip with his family and Lowndes Middle School spelling bee sponsor and teacher Conner Butler to Bainbridge where he competed in the District 9 Spelling Bee, school officials said. 

He was setting out on a mission he has undertaken so many occasions before. 

Since the young age of 10, Corbitt realized he possesses the rare talent of being an exceptional speller, school officials said. He has been competing in the Lowndes County Schools Spelling Bee since in the fourth grade at Moulton Branch Elementary School. 

Each year since, he has won first or second place at the school level and has advanced to the county-wide spelling bee every year. He won first place at the county level in both fifth and eighth grade, and at the Region District 9 level, he won third place in the fifth grade, school officials said.

Now and eighth grader, he won first place at regionals for District 9 by defeating 23 winning students from other school systems across South Georgia to bring home all the gold for the Lowndes County School System and to Lowndes Middle School, school officials said. 

Corbitt had an opportunity to speak at length with Lowndes Middle School Media Specialist Leigh Grantham about his Spelling Bee history and talent. 

“It feels so special to win at the regional level this year because the second-place winner was from the Valdosta City School System and the third-place winner was from Crossroads Baptist, a private Christian school also here in Valdosta,” he said.

When asked what one thing he feels has attributed the most to his success with spelling, he said without hesitation that it was the amount of reading he has done since a young age. 

Corbitt said his mother read to him every day as far back as he can remember. He added, in his home, reading was not an option, it was just something they did every day. 

He said he was not forced to read, but it was clear his mother made it a priority for their home. As a result, he learned to love books before even starting school.

Upon starting school at Moulton Branch Elementary Schoo, he said he vividly remembers being in pre-K and walking into the Media Center for the first time and seeing what seemed to be a “very gigantic room full of awesome books.” 

He and his classmates were shown the little shelves containing mostly the pre-K and kindergarten-level literature. He remembers thinking to himself, “I don’t want to read those books. I want to go over there!” 

It didn’t take his teacher long to recognize his early literacy skills and he was set free to read anything and everything he could in the library.

“The more you read and are exposed to the same words over and over in different contexts you rapidly begin to understand their meaning from clues within the text,” Corbitt said. “Then as you start seeing similarly spelled words in other books a reader is able to decipher their meaning and pronunciation just from being exposed to them before so many times before.” 

He said he did not limit his reading to one particular type such as science fiction or fantasy, but read across all genres regularly and didn’t limit himself to only one or two authors. 

Basically, he is well read and fluent because of reading such a wide variety of books. Although, Henry rapidly admits the Percy Jackson series by author Rick Riordan is far and above his favorite series.

“Verbally fluent well beyond his years and exhibits knowledge across all content areas,’ Grantham said. “His knowledge and views of historical events and also current world events is astounding for such a young age. There is no doubt that this depth of knowledge could only be built from reading self-selected books in great volume. He is a young man that has an extremely bright future before him.”

On Friday, March 15, Corbitt will travel to Atlanta to represent the region and Lowndes County School System at the Georgia Statewide Spelling Bee being held at Georgia State College in Atlanta. 

“We wish him great success in this event but are well aware of what a winner he already is and most importantly, he will be a winner in life because he loves to read,” school officials said.