Since the West Virginia spelling bee season began last fall, Sam has spent long hours poring over long lists of words, some of them from expensive books with thousands of words designed to prepare students for bees and college entrance exams.
WASHINGTON -- The first time Sam Matherly came here to spell, he didn't know what he was in for.
"The last time we came here, there was no system," said Sam's father, Randall. "We didn't have a system. We didn't know what to expect."
That was 2007, when Sam, who lives in Flat Top, hadn't been to the nation's capital, much less one of its tenser annual rituals, the Scripps National Spelling Bee.
Sam, then a sixth-grader, and five other West Virginians were eliminated right out of the gate based on scores from a written test.
"A lot of them were really hard words," said Randall Matherly, a machinist at Joy Mining Machinery in Bluefield, Va. "A lot of them I'd never heard of, and a lot of them I guess he'd never heard of."
This year, Sam hopes that won't happen.
Now a 13-year-old eighth-grader at Victory Baptist Academy in Beaver, Raleigh County, he earned another shot at the national bee when he won the Gazette-Mail Regional Spelling Bee in March. The regional bee is co-sponsored by West Virginia-American Water.
This time, Sam knows what he needs to do.
And he has a system to do it.
Since the West Virginia spelling bee season began last fall, Sam has spent long hours poring over long lists of words, some of them from expensive books with thousands of words designed to prepare students for bees and college entrance exams. If Sam misspells a word, his mother, Julia, makes him write it down.
Sam hopes that system will serve him well.
His goal: to stay in long enough to appear on TV. ESPN broadcasts the bee's Thursday afternoon semifinals. Better yet, ABC airs the finals in prime time on Thursday night.
To make it that far, he has to do better on this year's written test.
Spellers will learn the outcome of that test today. They took it on Tuesday -- separated in cubicle-like spaces, they listened through headphones to words, then they typed their spellings into a computer.
Today, every speller also will spell two words in front of the microphone as part of the preliminary rounds, which will be broadcast live on ESPN360.com starting at 1:15 p.m. Based on the combined score from the three preliminary rounds, no more than 50 spellers will make it to Thursday's semifinals.
This year's field of spellers is the largest in the bee's 82-year history and includes spellers from Canada and China and 33 whose first language is not English.
Wherever they're from, there's only so much they can do to prepare for the bee.
WASHINGTON -- The first time Sam Matherly came here to spell, he didn't know what he was in for.
"The last time we came here, there was no system," said Sam's father, Randall. "We didn't have a system. We didn't know what to expect."
That was 2007, when Sam, who lives in Flat Top, hadn't been to the nation's capital, much less one of its tenser annual rituals, the Scripps National Spelling Bee.
Sam, then a sixth-grader, and five other West Virginians were eliminated right out of the gate based on scores from a written test.
"A lot of them were really hard words," said Randall Matherly, a machinist at Joy Mining Machinery in Bluefield, Va. "A lot of them I'd never heard of, and a lot of them I guess he'd never heard of."
This year, Sam hopes that won't happen.
Now a 13-year-old eighth-grader at Victory Baptist Academy in Beaver, Raleigh County, he earned another shot at the national bee when he won the Gazette-Mail Regional Spelling Bee in March. The regional bee is co-sponsored by West Virginia-American Water.
This time, Sam knows what he needs to do.
And he has a system to do it.
Since the West Virginia spelling bee season began last fall, Sam has spent long hours poring over long lists of words, some of them from expensive books with thousands of words designed to prepare students for bees and college entrance exams. If Sam misspells a word, his mother, Julia, makes him write it down.
Sam hopes that system will serve him well.
His goal: to stay in long enough to appear on TV. ESPN broadcasts the bee's Thursday afternoon semifinals. Better yet, ABC airs the finals in prime time on Thursday night.
To make it that far, he has to do better on this year's written test.
Spellers will learn the outcome of that test today. They took it on Tuesday -- separated in cubicle-like spaces, they listened through headphones to words, then they typed their spellings into a computer.
Today, every speller also will spell two words in front of the microphone as part of the preliminary rounds, which will be broadcast live on ESPN360.com starting at 1:15 p.m. Based on the combined score from the three preliminary rounds, no more than 50 spellers will make it to Thursday's semifinals.
This year's field of spellers is the largest in the bee's 82-year history and includes spellers from Canada and China and 33 whose first language is not English.
Wherever they're from, there's only so much they can do to prepare for the bee.
Guessing what words will be used in the bee is daunting: they'll be some of the 476,000 words in the 4-pound, 2,816-page Webster's Third New International Dictionary.
"I know how many he needs to know -- over 470,000," said Sam's mother, Julia.
Rajat Singh, a 13-year-old seventh-grader at the Academy for Technology and the Classics in Sante Fe, N.M., and his mother, Monika, have been preparing the same way as the Matherlys.
Rajat has been trying to get to the national bee for four years. As a fourth-, fifth- and sixth-grader he finished runner-up in New Mexico's state bee.
This year, he made it all the way.
Like the Matherlys, the Singhs bought a big book of words from specialty publisher Hexco, which advertises material to prepare for the bee. Every time Rajat missed a word, his mother had him write it out and then they would come back to it until he could spell it.
Rajat also stepped up his study time ahead of the bee.
"It used to be two hours," he said. "Now it's just study as much as you can every day."
But for all the preparation, the bee's winner may come away with the title owing to the luck of the draw as much as from hard work.
One of the things Sam's mother worries about is the small words, the ones that spellers haven't thought about but could choke on.
Sam and 68 other spellers are returning to the national bee, held each year in Washington, D.C., for at least the second time. Seventeen kids have been to the bee three years or more.
That's the type of kid Sam expects to see win.
"Nobody expects to win unless you've been here four or five times," said Sam, who, as an eighth-grader, is in his last year of eligibility for the bee.
His father is optimistic, though.
"I think he'll do good," Randall said. "I mean, he didn't come here to lose."
"But neither did anybody else," Julia added.
Reach Ry Rivard at ry.riv...@dailymail.com or 304-348-1796.
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