Etiwanda High School makes history with 5th straight national Vocabulary Bowl victory

Throughout the past seven months, 1.3 million students across North America competed on behalf of their schools to master the most words in Vocabulary.com’s 7th annual Vocabulary Bowl. Students answered 450 million questions, mastered a collective total of 36.6 million words, and expanded their lexicons in the classroom and at home. 

In a dazzling display of academic achievement, Etiwanda High School cemented its Vocabulary Bowl legacy by becoming the competition’s first five-time overall champion, winning its titles consecutively since 2017. McKenzie Middle School battled until the end in a remarkably close race and was crowned the overall champion in the middle/elementary school category for the first time. Each school will receive its Champions Cup at a special ceremony, and all 50 U.S. state and 9 Canadian provincial winners will be recognized for their Bowl achievements with championship banners. 

The Vocabulary Bowl is hosted by Vocabulary.com, the leading destination for improving literacy through vocabulary building. 

Erudite Etiwanda

Etiwanda High School (EHS) is located in Rancho Cucamonga, California, and enrolls 3,400 students. Etiwanda is no stranger to Vocabulary Bowl record books: the school’s quintuple makes it the most decorated participant in Bowl history, and it previously set the record for most words learned in a season and most monthly wins overall (51). EHS kept pace with previous years by mastering an astonishing 335,569 words during the 2020-2021 season!

An extraordinary win calls for special recognition, so Vocabulary.com created a new word to honor Etiwanda’s fifth straight victory: Quintarian. The word is a combination of the Latin quintus, meaning “fifth,” and the suffix -arian, which forms nouns and adjectives concerned with a specific concept. As a noun, quintarian signifies a person, school, or team that wins a championship five times!

Volunteer state victory

McKenzie Middle School (MMS) serves 370 students and is located in McKenize, Tennessee. McKenize’s remarkable rise through the leaderboards highlights the school’s commitment to literacy. Last year, the Rebels placed 80th in the middle/elementary category. This season, McKenzie triumphed in the middle/elementary school and Division III categories, won the Tennessee state title and mastered the third-most words (218,033) out of all participants! McKenzie was in a neck-and-neck race through the closing days of the Bowl, eventually beating out a much larger rival school that had several times the number of students!

Vocabulary Bowl division champions 

During the Vocabulary Bowl, schools also battle it out within one of three divisions based on enrollment size. The division winners are:

• Divisions I: Winner—Etiwanda High School (Rancho Cucamonga, California); Runner up—Walnut Hills High School (Cincinnati, Ohio)
• Division II: Winner—Great Neck North Middle School (Great Neck, New York); Runner up—Pines Middle School (Pembroke Pines, Florida)
• Division III: Winner—McKenzie Middle School (McKenzie, Tennessee); Runner up—Elise Buckingham Charter High School (Vacaville, California) 

“It’s an honor to recognize the winners and participants of this year’s thrilling competition,” said Kristin Eckhardt, Senior Marketing Manager at Vocabulary.com. “We are inspired by the collective accomplishments of the schools and students that demonstrated their unquenchable thirst for building literacy skills and developing a love of language.”  

“At the beginning of this year’s Bowl, our teachers and students set a goal to be national champions,” said Cassie Ellis, 8th-grade English language arts teacher at McKenzie Middle School. “We proved what Mark Twain stated, ‘It’s not the size of the dog in the fight, but the size of the fight in the dog,’ by surpassing schools five times our size. We are extremely proud of our faculty and students for rising to the occasion to represent the community of McKenzie, Tennessee!”

Fast Facts about the 2020-2021 Vocabulary Bowl:

• Total students participating: 1,300,000+ million students
• Total schools participating: 43,500+
• Total words mastered: 36,600,000+
• K-12 students from 50 U.S. states, U.S. territories and 9 Canadian provinces participated
• Students earn points for their school by mastering words on Vocabulary.com
• See the full results of this season’s Vocabulary Bowl here.