Spellers hope for a capital time in Scripps National Spelling Bee

Twelve-year-old Amrith Samuel of Olathe loves Spanish tennis player Rafael Nadal and hopes to play in college one day.

Given the chance, Amrith will “play tennis every day,” said his mom, Vijaya Samuel.

But these days, he has a more immediate goal in front of him: to conquer the Scripps National Spelling Bee next week in Washington, D.C.

Amrith and Lawrence Zhang, 10, will represent Johnson County and are two of three Kansans who will compete at the bee.

National attention awaits them via the live broadcast on ESPN on Wednesday and Thursday.

“The worst type of performance isn’t for an audience,” in the room, Lawrence said. “It’s for a camera. (The broadcast) motivates me to study, because I don’t want to let the whole grade down.”

There are three ways you can get to the state at the national spelling bee if you’re a student in Kansas, assuming you’re under age 16 and haven’t yet finished eighth grade. You have to win the Olathe District Spelling Bee, the Kansas State Spelling Bee in Hays or the Regional Spelling Bee in Topeka. The Olathe News sponsors the Olathe bee.

Amrith triumphed in Olathe, while Lawrence, a fifth-grader at Heartland Elementary School in the Blue Valley School District, found victory in Hays after winning the Johnson County Spelling Bee. Fourteen-year-old Gracie Schroeder of Salina won the Topeka bee and will also represent Kansas.

When it comes to studying for the various bees, there are really no tricks to how Amrith and Lawrence prepare. Both look at word lists released by the bee officials that contain hundreds of possible words that can appear during the competition. They also use study programs and apps like Quizlet to help learn words.

They study definitions and examine word roots, but there’s no magic flashcard or memorizing strategy — just hard work and time.

“I find words, study them and look for patterns,” said Amrith, a seventh-grader at Mission Trail Middle School in the Olathe school district.

And even the champs have words that have been a little intimidating in the past, such as “cabriolet” and “pomeridian.” Both say that words with French origins are some of the toughest.

“When I’m onstage, and I don’t know the word, I’ll think about something happy so it’ll get back to me,” Amrith said. “I learned over the years not to rush.”

When it comes to school, both Amrith and Lawrence say their favorite subjects tend to be math and science.

At one of his first bees, Lawrence brought along a lucky penny, but he said he doesn’t have a lucky charm anymore. Amrith likes to bring along an orange baseball cap that reminds him of his hero — Nadal.

Lawrence and Amrith both credit their parents with offering support and help with studying — and with not being solely focused on winning.

Before a big competition, Amrith said that his family gets together and prays.

Life isn’t just about spelling for either boy. Amrith has his love of tennis and in his spare time, Lawrence likes playing with friends and making videos of dominoes falling in different configurations.

When he gets to Washington, Amrith hopes he gets the chance to visit the White House. Lawrence said he’s excited to meet other kids who might be even better at spelling than he is.

This story was originally published May 19, 2016 at 8:13 PM with the headline "Spellers hope for a capital time in Scripps National Spelling Bee."