Kosciusko County hasn’t had a student win the regional spelling bee and advance to nationals in 24 years. That rut ended this year when Edgewood Middle School eighth-grader Lora Kuhaneck won the regional March 7 at IPFW in Fort Wayne to advance to finals May 24 to 30, for the 88th Scripps National Spelling Bee. The bee takes place in the Maryland Ballroom at the Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center in National Harbor, Md. “It was kind of unexpected because I really wasn’t expecting to win. That sounds terrible, but it really hadn’t crossed my mind that I was going to make it this far,” Kuhaneck said in an interview Monday. She thought the other 13 contestants at regionals were probably better spellers than she was. The words at regionals were more difficult than the county bee, she said. “The only word I remember was ‘snaffle’ because that’s the one I got stuck on,” she recalled. “It’s not really that hard of a word.” The last Kosciusko winner was Meenakshi Datta, a Lakeview Middle School student, who won the regional in 1991, according to information provided by the Journal Gazette, which presents the Touchstone Energy Regional Spelling Bee. Datta graduated law school in 2003. “It’s a lot to live up to,” Kuhaneck said. Asked what she wanted to be when she grew up, she said, “Happy.” Edgewood Principal JoElla Smyth said happy was a good answer, but asked Kuhaneck what she wanted to be happy doing. “A lot of things. Science and film and writing,” Kuhaneck said. She enjoys making short, little films. She and Smyth also talked about Kuhaneck being an entrepreneur. Kuhaneck won the Kosciusko County Spelling Bee Feb. 3, taking home a trophy and a $2,500 Richard R. Long Scholarship, to advance to regionals. With her regional win against 13 other spelling bee contestants, Kuhaneck received a plaque for Edgewood and a $100 Samuel Louis Sugarman Award. Since then, she’s been busy preparing for nationals. “Studying, a lot,” she said. “Like an hour a day, usually after school. Sometimes more but usually about an hour.” She studies either alone, with her mom or with the online study tool she recently discovered. She said she isn’t as well prepared as she wants to be. “I think though that you are a voracious reader,” Smyth told her. “That helps a lot,” Kuhaneck agreed. “I asked her, ‘How do you know all these words?’ And she reads all the time. Then you also told me you kind of have a photographic mind,” Smyth said. “When it comes to words,” Kuhaneck interjected. “You see the word and you can see it again?” Smyth asked. Kuhaneck said yes, but, “It’s less like ‘picture’ photographic. It’s more like I can recognize the word and where I’ve seen the word. A lot of stuff, like with tests, I remember where it was on certain places on the page. It sounds ridiculous but it’s not.” If Kuhaneck makes it to the third round, she will appear on ESPN when the channel broadcasts the spelling bee. There are 285 spellers in the first round. Preliminaries air on ESPN 3 at 8 a.m. and 1:15 p.m. EDT May 27; semifinals air on ESPN 2 May 28 at 10 a.m. EDT; and finals air on ESPN May 28 at 8 p.m. EDT. “The other thing is that if you go to spellingbee.com, you can go to the champion profiles. It shows all the people from each state and all that,” Kuhaneck said. “If you click on the names, it’s got a little picture and profile.” The youngest speller will be a 9-year-old third-grader from Colorado. While Kuhaneck said she hasn’t checked out all the profiles yet, some of the other contestants will be a challenge to outspell. Smyth said the other contestants will find out how good Kuhaneck is when she spells. “And it’s just great that you got there,” she said. “We’re just really proud of that, and you know that.” Kuhaneck said she can do the spelling, but the harder part at nationals will be the vocabulary. “It’s like half vocabulary, half spelling for a lot of these questions,” she said. “Some of the questions are like: Which person would be most likely to use (blank)? A carpenter, a painter, a doctor, whatever. So that’s all context from everything.” The preliminaries of the national spelling bee are written, she said, but there are oral rounds as well. “I think the preliminaries in the first round are written and it varies. Some are oral rounds,” she explained. If Kuhaneck wins nationals, she said, “It would be really, really big. I don’t think it’s likely, looking at some of the competitors. I didn’t say it wasn’t possible, I said it wasn’t likely.” Smyth said she thought Kuhaneck was going to fool everyone there and will do great. “I think making it past the third round would be good. First goal is to make it past preliminaries. Keep going from there,” Kuhaneck said. For the trip to nationals, she said she will be traveling with her mom, stepdad and stepbrother. While there, her family will take some time to see some of the sights. She is the daughter of Bill and Jamie Norris and Wayne Kuhaneck. “There’s a barbecue that they have arranged and a Mount Vernon tour through the bee,” Kuhaneck said. “Then we also are planning on going to Arlington and we want to try to make it to the National Zoo.” Her advice to future spelling bee participants is to “absorb as much of the English language as you can. That’s a lot of it. Just reading and recognizing words. Just absorbing. I think that’s one of the biggest – just recognizing the word because you have it in your mind even if you don’t see it a lot. A basis for being able to spell it is just recognizing it.”
