How bad is this mistake?

Hello all,

Long-time lurker here. Glad to have finally registered.

The day before entering a prestigious unpublished manuscript competition, I decided to replace some slightly overused words throughout my book. Unfortunately, I changed 'staring' to 'gawking' in the first paragraph of the second chapter, only now to discover that I've used the same word three sentences before and somehow completely missed it! I also made a similar mistake in the middle of chapter three. This is quite frustrating, as the rest of the manuscript is clean and without amateur repetition errors, and I've only used 'gawking/gawk' three times in the entire manuscript. I'd already gone through the manuscript to replace overused words too, so my perfectionist self has come back to bite me.

Technically you can resubmit the manuscript (though it's frowned upon), however I'm seriously considering it. I've spent years rewriting and polishing for this competition, and can't believe I've made such silly last minute mistakes that may give judges the wrong impression. Just interested to hear what others think I should do. Considering this occurred early in the book, would this give you a bad impression if the writing was otherwise error-free?

Thanks for the input everyone.

The issue is that the judges don't have time to read all the submissions in full--the first few chapters will determine whether they continue on. Thankfully, I didn't touch the first chapter, which is error-free. I'm just afraid they'll assume the rest of the book is full of clunky word repetition when it isn't. However, if I'm overthinking, and it's a minor issue, I suppose I'll wait and hope for the best.