The Super Bowl wasn’t the weekend’s biggest competition for everyone.

Family and friends of the spelling bee winners from each elementary and middle school campus from Humble Independent School District packed an auditorium at Humble Middle School Saturday morning for district-wide competition.

In the end, Susan Xu, a seventh-grader at Riverwood Middle School, won the district spelling bee trophy and qualified for regional competition. Runner-up was Eric Rodriguez, a fifth grader at Deerwood Elementary.

There were some memorable spelling bee moments before the final rounds. One of the competitors asked the judges (three retired English teachers), “Can I just go now?” rather than finish a word he didn’t know how to spell, which prompted much laughter and applause.

Round 19 was “t-r-e-a-c-h-e-r-……. o-u-s,” as a competitor took a dramatic pause between syllables that seemed to last a lifetime.

Congratulations to all the kids who have been hovering over word lists for months.