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Maria Wasilewski spelled 'salve' to win The Free Lance-Star's regional bee and competes in this week's Scripps National Spelling Bee.
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By LAURA MOYER
When Maria Wasilewski of Stafford County stands onstage this week at the Grand Hyatt Washington hotel, she'll fulfill a family quest.
It's been 45 years since one of her uncles competed for a chance to enter the Olympics of youth spelling--the annual Scripps National Spelling Bee. An aunt tried next, then Maria's mom.
All got to the final rounds of their district bees, then faltered.
About the time Maria's future mother was competing in suburban Maryland, her future dad won a bee in his Michigan hometown. But that bee didn't send its champion to Washington.
More recently, two of Maria's older sisters were bee contenders, losing only in the final rounds of contests that would have sent them to the national stage.
And then came Maria.
In March, the home-schooled seventh-grader remained poised through 25 rounds of competition to win the Regional Spelling Bee, sponsored by The Free Lance-Star.
Besides awarding Maria a cash prize, the paper sent her to Washington for five days of bee activities and competition that started yesterday.
She's among 288 spellers from across the United States and around the world who have headed to Washington for the bee, which begins Thursday.
Maria is a soft-spoken 13-year-old, the fifth of Steven and Rita Wasilewski's eight children.
Her siblings are Teresa, 22; Christa, 21; Michael, 20; Kelsey, 16; Regina, 11; Dominic, 7; and Joe, 5.
Like Maria, all were or are home-schooled. Her eldest two sisters are now college students, and her big brother is in the Army.
Maria doesn't remember exactly when she realized she could be good at spelling, but she does think her sisters' bee experiences influenced her.
She started studying a booklet produced by the Scripps bee in preparation for the 2007 Regional Spelling Bee and made it to the top three.
In January of this year, she began studying again in earnest, reviewing several source lists, writing each word and defining those she didn't know.
She's filled page after page in a battered spiral notebook that younger sister Regina says goes everywhere.
Since her Regional Bee win in March, Maria has made liberal use of an unabridged dictionary that was among her prizes. She uses it to check word origins, pronunciations and definitions.
The Scripps national contest requires that all spellers, home-schooled or otherwise, keep up with their regular schoolwork as they prepare for the bee.
Maria arranges her days so that the other subjects come first--math, English, science, history, geography and Latin, which she's just starting to study.
Only then does she turn to spelling, either by working through a spelling CD-ROM on the family computer or by using lists that include past championship bee words.
Solitary study is good for adding new words, but for review it helps when one of her sisters will quiz her.
"I bribe them, usually," Maria says with a smile.
Much as she enjoys words and spelling, she finds time for other pursuits. She likes horses, music, cooking, gardening and Irish dance, and she attends St. William of York Catholic Church with her family.
She shares her tidy bedroom with her parakeets, Geo and Carpathia, and Regina's parakeet, Icy.
What's missing? TV, mostly. The family doesn't have cable. And Maria doesn't have the distractions of a cell phone or her own computer.
Instead, when she's not preparing for a spelling competition, she reads.
And big sister Kelsey points out that Maria doesn't just stick to kids' books.
"She's read 'Pride and Prejudice,'" Kelsey says.
Laura Moyer: 540/374-5417
Email: lmoyer@freelancestar.com
Two hundred eighty-eight spellers ages 8 to 15 are in Washington this week for the Scripps National Spelling Bee, held at the Grand Hyatt Washington hotel. All spellers will take a 50-word computerized spelling test before the first day of competition, which is Thursday. That morning, everyone gets a chance to stand onstage and spell one word. Of the 50 words on the computerized test, 25 count toward a points total that will determine who advances. The word spelled in the onstage round also counts. The goal is to narrow the field down to about 100 spellers, Those 100 are quarterfinalists, and their competition can be viewed online Thursday afternoon at ESPN360.com. Any speller still in the competition on Friday is a semifinalist. From 11 a.m. to 2 p.m., the semifinal rounds will be televised live on ESPN. Ten spellers will become finalists. They will vie for the $30,000 top prize in final rounds to be broadcast live |
