West Orange Student Participates in 'Cake Boss' Spelling Bee

A West Orange student made it to the North Jersey Spelling Bee at last Thursday.

Nyein-Chan Win, a fifth grader from Gregory Elementary School in West Orange went as far as Round 5, but misspelled the word "phraseology."

Win was one of 32 finalists at the North Jersey Spelling Bee.

A student from Haverstraw Middle School, Sanjana Mohan Malla, won the competition, spelling "tromometer," an instrument used for measuring or detecting minute earth tremors, according to Merriam-Webster.

She received a laptop, a $1,000 scholarship and advanced to the Scripps National Spelling Bee in Washington, D.C.

The competition was the 75th annual North Jersey Spelling Bee. To celebrate, Mauro Castano of Cake Boss wheeled in a cake decorated with all the winning words from each year and topped with a bumblebee.

A camera crew was on hand to film the bee as part of a Cake Boss episode.

The first winner of the North Jersey Spelling Bee, Margaret Karle Schak, was also on hand. Schak met President Franklin Delano Roosevelt after winning the spelling bee in 1935, and went on to become the first woman mayor of Rutherford.

"This original spelling be experience gave me confidence in my life," she told the students.