John Gray High School teams crowned Scrabble Scrum champions

In celebration of Rotary Literacy Month in March, LIFE (Literacy is for Everyone) Ltd and the Rotary Club of Grand Cayman Sunrise jointly hosted the inaugural High School version of their Cayman Islands Scrabble Scrum competition on Thursday 19th March at St. Ignatius Catholic School. Four teams from St. Ignatius Catholic School and John Gray High School participated in the event.

Teams of four to six students gathered eagerly around a Scrabble game board and sought to fill the board with high-scoring words in a limited amount of time. Students competed in two age groups, and the highest scoring team in each age group after three rounds was crowned the champion.

John Gray High School’s Scrabble Slammers team (Thea Foster, Jabari Waldron, Charan Senthil, Reon Torter, Jaevan Maxwell, Alle Ann Sobrejuanite, Alec Harding and Aleigha General) were crowned the Junior Champions, and the Senior Champions trophy went to John Gray High School’s Scrabblenauts team (Bianca Rego-Ramos, Shanann Thompson, Jaymar Myles, Enrique McCoy, Akeliah Brown, Kadar Afflick and Stephen Thane). Shanann Thompson, of the JGHS Scrabblenauts team, described the competition as “challenging, fun and exciting”, and she and her teammates especially enjoyed the teamwork element of the event. All the students said they would like to take part in next year’s competition. Books & Books generously sponsored the prizes for the competition with all students in the two winning teams receiving a CI$50 gift certificate.

“It was amazing to see the students so engaged in the competition and all working hard to think of high-scoring words for their team,” said Woody Foster, Chairman of LIFE Ltd and Director of the Rotary Sunrise Literacy Committee. “The Scrabble Scrum competition encourages students to think about spelling words and also requires them to use numeracy skills to calculate the highest-scoring words.” Students were allowed to look-up a word in the dictionary if they were unsure about the spelling of the word.

Patrick Kreitlow of the Rotary Sunrise Literacy Committee and a member of the LIFE Executive Team was the MC for the event, having previously been the MC at the corporate Scrabble Scrum fundraiser in September 2014. “It is very exciting to see the concept of the Scrabble Scrum competition launching so well in Cayman,” said Patrick. “What better way to celebrate Literacy Month than by enabling high school students to play a fun, fast-paced word-creation game with their peers!”

Following the success of last year’s event, LIFE and Rotary Sunrise will soon be gearing up for their second corporate Scrabble Scrum fundraiser in September 2015 to mark International Literacy Day.

Photo Attached. — John Gray High School’s Scrabblenauts team in action