Vindy champion Lee is ready for national spelling bee

Vindy champion Lee is ready for national spelling bee

Canfield

Vindicator Spelling Bee champion Max Lee spends two to three hours per night preparing for the national competition, which starts Tuesday in Washington, D.C.

“If I study more I feel like I’m more confident,” said Max, 12, a seventh-grader at Canfield Village Middle School.

Sometimes he listens to Chopin, one of his favorite composers, as he studies. It helps to break up the boredom. When he’s not spelling, or studying spelling words, Max plays classical piano competitively.

He’s the son of Tac and Linglan Liu Lee.

His mother says Max breaks up his marathon spelling study session with other activities.

“He goes out and plays basketball or plays tennis on the garage door,” she said.

Max outspelled 65 other students from all over Mahoning and a portion of Trumbull County last March to win The Vindicator 79th Regional Spelling Bee.

That win earned him a berth at the Scripps National Spelling Bee and the Vindicator is underwriting an all-expense-paid trip to Washington, D.C, including hotel, travel, tours, meals and incidental expenses for Max and one of his parents.

Families arrive today in the nation’s capital and competition begins Tuesday with written preliminary tests followed by more preliminary competition Wednesday and the semifinals and finals Thursday.

His parents, younger sister, Jessica, and his two grandmothers will accompany him on the trip.

Max, who was the runner-up in the 78th Vindicator Bee, watched the national competition the previous two years.

He learned that the competitors that do the best, exercise their rights to ask a lot of questions. At the national event, spellers can ask a word’s origin, definition, alternate pronunciations, form of speech as well as asking the announcer to use it in a sentence.

Max plans to ask those questions too if he’s stumped by a word.

Read more in Sunday’s Vindicator and Vindy.com