EUREKA — Nearly 44,000 schools across the country competed in vocabulary.com's 7th annual Vocabulary Bowl, a nationwide competition with thousands competing to learn the most words.
Eureka's Lincoln County High School students mastered nearly 24,000 words and won the title for Montana.
Words like precipice and gobbledygook didn't phase the Lions. In fact, it will only help them with ACT prep.
“I don't know why I lost like hours of time and just didn't even realize time was passing, just working on the site. I think I mastered about 5000 words,” said Sophomore Taylor Lancaster.
Lancaster and many other students took the time they spent studying from home to expand their learning abilities.
That studying included lists of words that help the students learn everything from spelling to understanding meaning.
“It was like easy because like first half of the year, I was home online. I don't really have much time to do it, and then when I came back, I had started getting competition. That's when I started kicking things into gear,” said Bud Richard Jr, a freshman.
The students say that even though they were mastering literacy concepts.
“Being able to compete with my classmates and I'm a pretty competitive person so it was really nice just spending hours doing it. I think in one month I had like 16 hours spent just on vocabulary.com trying to beat somebody,” said Katelynn Singer, freshman.
Jacob Buckingham is looking forward to learning even more words, definitions and literacy next year. “I think next year I can definitely do more than I've done this year and help win again."
English and Psychology teacher Aaron Gideon says this competition has more benefits to the students.
“Learning words that can be used within writing or learning the words to communicate, or just to be able to think more efficiently is something that will benefit all students,” said Gideon.
Gideon is even looking toward the future and says vocabulary.com is a great program for the students.
“But we will continue to dominate. I guess whether we win or lose or not, it's a good program to be able to use. You know, the same thing with, you know, exercise and science,” said Gideon.
The vocabulary.com contest runs from Oct. 1 to April 30 every year.
