Ashburton College's four teams did themselves and their college proud, taking on ten categories of spelling and other teams from the Aoraki region at the annual Extra! Spelling Competition in Timaru.

The annual Extra! Spelling Competition saw AshColl defend its 2018 title and bring home the silverware. College entered two Year 9 and two Year 10 teams which faced off against other Aoraki secondary schools as they battled abbreviations and proofreading; among other spelling tasks. The winning team of Marc Calzada, Hamish Lyth and Conner Stewart said that the abbreviations category proved to be the most difficult with 'TT4N' , 'C4N', 'NIWA' and 'Q.C' stumping them. They had more success in identifying words such as 'waltz' as coming from Germany and 'caviar' being Russian in origin, answers which helped them to first place.  Having not being mentioned on the leaderboard at the half way point, Year 9 students Molly McKenna, Laura Jensen and Laura Winchester got a shock when their efforts took them to third place. They too, said the abbreviations section proved difficult but had more success at the proofreading and synonyms section.  And in case you too were stumped, 'TT4N' is 'Ta Ta for now,' ' C4N' is 'Ciao for now', 'NIWA' is 'National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research',  and 'QC' stands for Queen's Counsel.