The annual Ann Davis West Alabama Scrabble Tournament was held at the campus of the University of West Alabama on March 11. There were 268 participants from grades 3 through 8, and U.S. Jones Elementary School brought 37 participants from its third-grade Enrichment program.

The U.S. Jones team of Breanna Brax-ton and Rodney Skidmore won third place in the third- and fourth-grade division.

“We practice the Scrabble game in our Enrichment class,” said third-grade teacher and Scrabble team sponsor Mary Stuede-man. “We choose partners, and when we go there, we play partners from four different schools. They take the top scores and average them in to see who won.”

Stuedeman said playing Scrabble or any other kind of game that encourages brainwork helps the students in many ways.

“It helps them to improve their vocabulary,” she said. “They try to come up with words that are worth a lot of points, looking for words with Q’s and other big-score letters to get the most points that they can get.

“It helps them every year. It’s neat to walk around and see which words they are making. They’ve got their Scrabble dictionaries, so they practice using some of the words that come from that.”

The late Ann Davis was a teacher from Thomasville who came up with the idea for a regional Scrabble tournament, inviting schools from this area to take part. Students from Thomasville, Grove Hill, Monroeville and Selma all take part in the annual tournament.