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The Scripps National Spelling Bee begins today, bringing 247 spelling bee champions from around the country to the heart of Washington D.C.
Sixth grader Jayden Jiang and eighth grader Isaac Geremew, the Philadelphia and South Jersey regional champions,respectively, will both be competing as seasoned veterans after winning their respective Regional Spelling Bees, both hosted by WHYY and Billy Penn.
Both spellers are making their third appearances at the national bee.
“This time I feel like I have a lot more experience with the spelling bee,” Geremew, who attends William Davies Middle School, said before the tournament.
Last year, Jiang made it to the semifinals and Geremew reached the quarterfinals. Both said they are looking to improve on those finishes this year.
For Jiang, the biggest challenge hasn’t been the spelling, but being up on stage. The student at Girard Academic Music Program said he’s learned a solution to deal with that.
“The new way that I found to cope with the anxiety of being on stage is to block out the audience and stay focused on my spelling,” he said.
Does it work all the time?
“Usually,” he said.
This year, the venue of the Bee has moved from National Harbor, Md. to Washington, D.C.’s DAR Constitution Hall. Both Geremew and Jiang said they’re excited to see the new venue and explore the nation’s capital while they’re there.
“I’m excited to make new friends this year,” Jiang said. “I’m also excited to do the various activities at the ‘Bee Hive,’ such as foosball and basketball.”
Outside of school and spelling, Jiang enjoys reading, watching TV, solving Rubik’s cubes, conducting scientific experiments, playing video games and coding.
Geremew passes the time by playing trumpet in the school band, learning languages and working on the novel he’s been writing for the past few years — a novel about a family escaping debt and the police in an old yellow Jeep.
“[It’s] probably a year or a half-year before I’m done revising the book and finishing up the small parts at the end, then I’m pretty sure it should be done,” he said.
Both Geremew and Jiang’s parents have spent long hours helping them prepare for the national bee. Wondi Geremew, Isaac’s father, said he’s amazed by all the kids competing at this level.
“My background is mathematics. People say mathematics is hard, but I think spelling is hard because it’s just like solving a puzzle,” he said “I learned that pretty much all the words are like building blocks. So you need to know the roots and then you just put them together.”
Jayden’s mother, Xiaojuan Ke, said that the preparations also involve managing the pressure of competing, and putting the fact they’re even in the national bee in perspective.
“I always tell him that just making it to the national spelling bee is already an incredible achievement,” she said. “Regardless of how he performs here, he’s already a regional champion. I tell him that I’m proud of him for being willing to take the time to study, for having the courage to try again after a setback, for correcting his own mistakes and for constantly improving himself.”
Competing on the national level for a third time, both spellers have built up a veteran’s mindset to the competition.
“Really, the thing with the spelling bee is you’re not really competing against other people so much as you’re competing against the word that you’re getting to spell,” Geremew said. “So it’s a very personal thing of self-improvement and learning how to decode the words that you get.”
The tournament’s preliminaries are today, followed by the quarterfinals and semifinals on Wednesday, then finals on Thursday. Last year’s champion was Faizan Zaki, from Allen, Texas. You can watch preliminaries and the quarterfinals on Scripps Sports and the later rounds on Ion Television.
