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Champ gets prepared
By Denise Dick
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 who 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.
In studying the lists of words provided by Scripps, Max has decided that Japanese or Hawaiian words are easier to spell. They’re spelled phonetically, he explains.
“Teriyaki,” he used as an example. “You have the T and then eri, then yaki.” Every letter is pronounced.
Words from more-obscure languages such as some of those spoken by Eskimos prove more challenging.
“They don’t show up much,” Max said. “You don’t have the opportunity to see them that much.”
The family will enjoy some sightseeing during their trip, and Max looks forward to visiting one of the Smithsonian museums.
He’s most excited, though, about the actual competition.