Donna McManus got the last word Wednesday.

The winner of the county-wide Older Adult Spelling Championship, she was one of 10 contestants competing to see who could spell success.

Hosted by the Lutheran Service Society, the contestants qualified by winning preliminary spelling bees this month at their respective senior centers.

"I had the opportunity to do the spelling bees in each of the local senior centers and they were real excited about doing it," said Pam Malachin, service coordinator for the Lutheran Service Society.

The competition began with words like "lodging," "spruce" and "fiesta," taken from the Paideia, a standard list of words and definitions used in spelling bees nationwide.

By round three, one contestant was out, with the words becoming more difficult as time went on.

By round 13, a misspelling of the word "narrative" brought the competition down to two contestants.

McManus, a member of the Cranberry Township Senior Center and Edward Kesicki of the Southeast Senior Center continued in head-to-head battle, with words like "hurricane" and "overvoltage."

After 32 rounds, judges decided to advance to a more difficult section of the word list, beginning with the words "summitry" and "disentangle."

In the 34th round, Kesicki misspelled the word "buttony."

McManus then correctly spelled the same word, then the word "gaseous," winning the competition.

I think it went wonderful," said Malachin. "They spelled more words than I ever anticipated.

"I'm very proud, I knew she was gonna do it," said Rita Schweiger, manager of the Cranberry Township senior center.

"I've always had trouble with the women in the spelling bee," joked Kesicki, who remembered taking second place to a girl in his school days.

In addition to their first and second place ribbons, McManus and Kesicki were presented with word games, donated by the Chicora Senior Center and The Thinking Cap.

"It was fun," said McManus of the competition.

The first spelling bee she's competed in since the seventh grade and her first ever win, McManus said she was nervous early that morning, even getting out of bed to check the spelling of "humongous," just in case.

Both McManus and Kesicki will advance to the statewide competition at Washington and Jefferson College on June 9.