SOUTH JORDAN, Utah — The best spellers in the country are coming together to compete next week in the Scripps National Spelling Bee, and Utah is fielding four of the contestants.
Sophia Montana, a hyperlexic sixth grader from Daybreak Elementary School in South Jordan, to talk about her path to the bee and what kind of studying it takes to prepare for such a big stage.
“Well, it can kind of vary,” Sophia said, “On weekdays. I could study for maybe three hours on weekends, I could study for like eight hours, or on one day, I could study only one hour.”
Sophia studied hundreds of words to get ready, but one word is the young girl’s favorite: ‘staphylococci,’ a genus of Gram-positive bacteria in the family Staphylococcaceae from the order Bacillales.
“It's kind of hard to remember all of them,” she said. “Especially when I actually need to say them."
Sophia also is a fan of ‘sesquipedalian’
“Sesquipedalian is a cool word,” Sophia explained. “It means, well, a word that has long, like a lot of syllables in it."
Sophia says she gets nervous on the stage but she is more excited about winning so we works through the nerves.
She has only competed in two spelling bees leading up to the big one next week in which the winner receives $50,000.
The nationally televised Scripps National Spelling Bee starts Tuesday, May 28.
