Vindicator spelling champ refrains from being list-less

By HAROLD GWIN
VINDICATOR EDUCATION WRITER
YOUNGSTOWN -- Imagine having to know how to spell a list of more than 470,000 words.
That's the daunting task facing Lauren E. Johnson, The Vindicator's 2006 Spelling Bee champ, as she heads off to Washington, D.C., for the 79th Scripps National Spelling Bee on Wednesday and Thursday.
The unabridged dictionary used as the word source for the national bee has more than 470,000 words in it, though the official word list culled for the event totals only 915, Lauren said.
However, none of the participants has any idea what those words are.
"I'm nervous, but I'm getting prepared," Lauren said, explaining that she tries to study between one and three hours every day. She also spends a lot of time just browsing through the dictionary.
She even puts up lists of words above the kitchen sink at their Point View Avenue home to study while she washes dishes, said her father, James.
"I try to put up word lists everywhere," Lauren said.
Getting help
She hasn't been working totally alone.
Thomas Lavery of Akron, who said his daughter took second place in a past national bee, approached the Johnson family on the day that Lauren won The Vindicator Bee and offered to help her prepare for the big show in Washington.
Lavery has come to Youngstown on a couple of weekends to work with Lauren, bringing her study material and doing spelling drills with her, her father said.
"It's been very helpful," Lauren said.
Lauren, 14, is an avid reader who finds Agatha Christie's work fascinating.
Going to the national bee has been a dream of hers for a long time, she said. She has been in three Vindicator events trying to win a shot at Washington, finishing seventh, fifth and finally first this year.
How well she does in the national event will be part of God's plan for her, she said.
She won't be going to Washington alone.
A family affair
The entire family -- father James, mother Sarah, brothers Matthew, Andrew and Samuel, sister Emily and baby sister Abigail, just 2 weeks old -- will all be going.
They're leaving today, flying out of Cleveland and landing in Baltimore where a limo will pick them up to take them to their hotel.
It won't be all business in Washington. "We're going to have fun," James Johnson said, noting that there will be a Scripps-sponsored family Memorial Day picnic, a pizza party and touring, James Johnson said.
All 275 spellers -- the most in the bee's history -- will participate in a written spelling test and the first round of oral competition Wednesday, Lauren said, but only the top 90 move on to the semifinals.
ESPN will broadcast the preliminary championship rounds from noon to 3 p.m. Thursday and ABC television will air the finals live from 8 to 10 p.m. that same day.
This year's competition is pretty evenly divided, according to the bee's Web site, featuring 139 boys and 136 girls.
The youngest is a 9-year-old and the oldest are a pair of 15-year-olds. Sixty-six of the competitors have been to the national bee before, two of them coming back for their fifth try.
Nearly 14 percent are, like Lauren, home-schooled.