How do you spell oversight?

For one Northwest Missouri student, it’s in the dictionary under “heartbreak.”

Morgan Brown, a seventh-grader in Dearborn, Mo., thought she had her ticket punched to the National Spelling Bee in Washington after winning a regional competition in St. Joseph.

But them came the paperwork - and way went Morgan’s dream.

Her story is already up on the mother ship: Bee organizers apparently made a slight change in the eligibility rules this year, requiring individual schools, rather than entire school districts, to be registered for the contest.

That amendment went unknown to administrators at Morgan’s school, North Platte Junior High, who found out the hard way that bee regulations are, indeed, rigid. (From the Latin, rigidus, “rough, severe…”)

“Our rules are such that there just isn’t a way out of this,” bee director Paige Kimble told the Associated Press.

The Scripps National Spelling Bee is a Beltway hit, bringing scores of parents and their word whiz children to the nation’s capital each year. The event has been covered by ESPN, and has inspired a documentary and feature film.

Morgan’s congressman, Republican Sam Graves, wants to see if he can still help Morgan get to the competition.

According to our friends across the interstate at the K.C. Star’s Prime Buzz blog, Graves spokesman Jason Klindt said that the congressman plans on placing a call today to the bee to ask them to reinstate Morgan.

Graves “believes that she should be allowed to participate like the hundreds of other students whose schools were allowed to fix the technicality,” Klindt told the Buzz.