 Ring in the New Year with amazing savings from Appalachian Wireless. Get the Galaxy S7 for just $49.99 when you sign a renew a two-year service agreement. Better service, bigger savings. That's today's Appalachian Wireless. The Pye County School District hosted its annual Pye County Spelling Bee today in the Belfry High School Auditorium. 95 4th through 8th grade students from each elementary school in the county participated in the event. The event also hosted students from Pikeville Independent and Christ Central. The day began with a competition from each grade level. Each grade level winner then competed against one another for an overall winner. The overall winner will now advance to the state level competition. The winner at the state level can move on to the national spelling bee. A lot of folks are familiar with that. They may have seen that on ESPN. Students who have participated in the Pike County Spelling Bee have in the past participated in that and done quite well and advanced to be televised at the finals. Organizers of the event say spelling bees are an important learning tool for all students involved. We all need to know how to spell, but we all need to be able to apply that and being able to apply what we know and for students to have that vessel to be able to have the application of learning, show the proof of learning and then to have an uncompetitive setting. There's nothing wrong with competition for them to be able to compete against other students to try to out spell them in a setting like this just prepares them for the world. It prepares them for the opportunity to compete and to succeed. Pike County Schools will now host a spelling bee for high school students Friday at Belfry High School. Reporting in Belfry for EKB News, I'm Shelby Still.