Three area students head to Scripps National Spelling Bee: Here's the buzz on them
The three spellers representing the region at this week's Scripps National Spelling Bee, from left: YY Liang, Olivia Lipiec and Victor Yang. Credit: Jeff Bachner
When Victor Yang shared with his mother a word he had read from a book — “flabbergasted” — she burst out laughing at the sound of it.
Its pronunciation amused both mother and son. He was in third grade at the time, and they were learning to speak English more fluently as immigrants who had moved to Great Neck from Beijing a year prior in 2019.
This week, Victor, 12, is in National Harbor, Maryland, where he will stand on a televised stage and compete with nearly 250 other children from across the country and as far away as Guam in an arena where words reign supreme: the Scripps National Spelling Bee. They will try to spell out some of the hardest, most unusual words, like “psammophile,” “moorhen” and “murraya,” the winning words from the past three years.
Victor will be joined by Olivia Lipiec, 13, of Smithtown, and YY Liang, 12, of Westchester County. They are the top three finishers from the ScholarSkills/Scripps Long Island-Westchester Spelling Bee, which was held in March at Half Hollow Hills High School East in Dix Hills. YY, a home-schooled student, finished first.
Preliminary rounds of the national bee begin Tuesday, and the finals will be held Thursday. The champion will take home a trophy and $50,000 in cash, along with other prizes. The 245 spellers this year range from ages 8 through 15.
“It doesn’t feel real that I’m going national,” Olivia said with excitement. “I can’t believe it’s happening.”
To Olivia, there’s something nerve-wracking about the finality of the national contest.
“There’s always a next step after the class bee, the school bee and the regional bee,” she said last week. “This is it. There’s nothing after it.”
Here's a closer look at the students representing the region at the national bee.
[object Object], "Myriad", [object Object], Math, [object Object], “I just think of something that makes me feel better, like being at home with my family or talking to friends," she said,.
When she was younger, Olivia would sneak books into her bed and read past her bedtime, using the light from her watch to illuminate the pages. And when her parents told her it was time for bed, she would often break out in pleas: “One more chapter!”
Olivia, a seventh-grader who attends Accompsett Middle School, is enchanted by storytelling. At the moment, she’s interested in cinematography and said she wants to be a filmmaker when she grows up. “I like to create stories,” she said.
At home, her parents, immigrants from Poland, speak Polish, and Olivia attends a Polish school on Saturdays to be more fluent in the language. She’s also learning French.
Her father, Pawel Lipiec, marveled at how fast she could remember and dissect words in English.
He recalled watching her recollect most words from reviewing a list only once and thinking: “How did you remember these long words? That’s impressive,” he said.
Olivia said she rather stumbled upon spelling after having easily won a class bee, and then a school bee, in sixth grade. She's found it interesting how some words aren’t spelled the way they sound, and how precision matters.
“You could forget one letter, like one extra 't,' and you are wrong,” she said.
[object Object], “Music”, [object Object], Math and science, [object Object], Victor starts to play classical music in his mind, usually what he's just practiced on piano, “It distracts me from a situation, and I get less nervous,” he said,.
After Victor began second grade in the United States, he found satisfaction in spelling long words like “challenging” or “adventure.” It also bothered him to see the red wavy lines underlying misspelled words in digital documents.
“It looks neater without the red lines,” he said. “It makes the writing look better.”
His mother, Li Xue, said she and her husband were surprised by how far their son has come. The main reason they immigrated to the United States was their only child’s education.
“We thought if he could catch up and not have difficulty to understand what the teachers are teaching. That was our expectation,” she said. “To our pleasant surprise, he not only was able to study well in his class when he just came here, he excelled.”
Victor, a sixth-grader who attends Great Neck North Middle School, loves coding, and he had made a digital flash card program so he could review words quickly.
“Coding allows me to make anything on my computer,” he said. “I can entertain myself with the games I made. Or I can use what I made to help myself accomplish things.”
[object Object], “Trompe l'oeil”, [object Object], English, [object Object], "Usually I don't do anything, I have this philosophy about how time works, I just let it pass," she said, .
YY can’t say why exactly she likes “trompe l'oeil,” which could mean a style of painting in which objects are depicted with photographically realistic detail or illusion, according to Merriam-Webster. She remembers looking at it and deciding that she liked it, she said.
YY is a nationally ranked junior tennis player from Hartsdale. While her favorite subject is English, she’s also learning French and Chinese. She was introduced to spelling bees when she was in elementary school and won the school bee. On the day she won, she came home holding a bouquet of bee-shaped balloons.
"I felt kind of surprised and maybe a tiny bit shocked," she recalled of the moment. "Just happy in general."
YY has been home-schooled since the pandemic and didn’t return after her parents saw that she learns faster in this setting and that the flexible schedule allows her to play tennis more, said her father, Weiming Liang.
She spelled “Freon” to win the regional championship, a word she learned last year when she and her dad bought some to fix his car.
To YY, tennis and spelling contests are vastly different.
“Tennis competitions are basically like boxing. You have to attack the other person, or they'll attack you,” she said. “Spelling bee is, as a lot of people said, just everyone against the dictionaries.”
When Victor Yang shared with his mother a word he had read from a book — “flabbergasted” — she burst out laughing at the sound of it.
Its pronunciation amused both mother and son. He was in third grade at the time, and they were learning to speak English more fluently as immigrants who had moved to Great Neck from Beijing a year prior in 2019.
This week, Victor, 12, is in National Harbor, Maryland, where he will stand on a televised stage and compete with nearly 250 other children from across the country and as far away as Guam in an arena where words reign supreme: the Scripps National Spelling Bee. They will try to spell out some of the hardest, most unusual words, like “psammophile,” “moorhen” and “murraya,” the winning words from the past three years.
Victor will be joined by Olivia Lipiec, 13, of Smithtown, and YY Liang, 12, of Westchester County. They are the top three finishers from the ScholarSkills/Scripps Long Island-Westchester Spelling Bee, which was held in March at Half Hollow Hills High School East in Dix Hills. YY, a home-schooled student, finished first.
WHAT TO KNOW
- Three students, two from Long Island and one from Westchester, will compete with nearly 250 other children from across the country and as far as Guam in the Scripps National Spelling Bee.
- They will try to spell out some of the hardest, most unusual words, like “psammophile,” “moorhen” and “murraya,” the winning words from the past three years.
- Preliminary rounds of the national bee begin Tuesday.
Preliminary rounds of the national bee begin Tuesday, and the finals will be held Thursday. The champion will take home a trophy and $50,000 in cash, along with other prizes. The 245 spellers this year range from ages 8 through 15.
“It doesn’t feel real that I’m going national,” Olivia said with excitement. “I can’t believe it’s happening.”
To Olivia, there’s something nerve-wracking about the finality of the national contest.
“There’s always a next step after the class bee, the school bee and the regional bee,” she said last week. “This is it. There’s nothing after it.”
Here's a closer look at the students representing the region at the national bee.
Olivia Lipiec
When she was younger, Olivia would read by the light of her watch past bedtime. Credit: Newsday/John Paraskevas
- Favorite word: "Myriad"
- Favorite subject: Math
- How I keep calm: “I just think of something that makes me feel better, like being at home with my family or talking to friends," she said.
When she was younger, Olivia would sneak books into her bed and read past her bedtime, using the light from her watch to illuminate the pages. And when her parents told her it was time for bed, she would often break out in pleas: “One more chapter!”
Olivia, a seventh-grader who attends Accompsett Middle School, is enchanted by storytelling. At the moment, she’s interested in cinematography and said she wants to be a filmmaker when she grows up. “I like to create stories,” she said.
At home, her parents, immigrants from Poland, speak Polish, and Olivia attends a Polish school on Saturdays to be more fluent in the language. She’s also learning French.
Her father, Pawel Lipiec, marveled at how fast she could remember and dissect words in English.
He recalled watching her recollect most words from reviewing a list only once and thinking: “How did you remember these long words? That’s impressive,” he said.
Olivia said she rather stumbled upon spelling after having easily won a class bee, and then a school bee, in sixth grade. She's found it interesting how some words aren’t spelled the way they sound, and how precision matters.
“You could forget one letter, like one extra 't,' and you are wrong,” she said.
Victor Yang
Victor, who loves coding, made a digital flash card program so he could review words quickly. Credit: Jeff Bachner
- Favorite word: “Music”
- Favorite subject: Math and science
- How I keep calm: Victor starts to play classical music in his mind, usually what he's just practiced on piano. “It distracts me from a situation, and I get less nervous,” he said.
After Victor began second grade in the United States, he found satisfaction in spelling long words like “challenging” or “adventure.” It also bothered him to see the red wavy lines underlying misspelled words in digital documents.
“It looks neater without the red lines,” he said. “It makes the writing look better.”
His mother, Li Xue, said she and her husband were surprised by how far their son has come. The main reason they immigrated to the United States was their only child’s education.
“We thought if he could catch up and not have difficulty to understand what the teachers are teaching. That was our expectation,” she said. “To our pleasant surprise, he not only was able to study well in his class when he just came here, he excelled.”
Victor, a sixth-grader who attends Great Neck North Middle School, loves coding, and he had made a digital flash card program so he could review words quickly.
“Coding allows me to make anything on my computer,” he said. “I can entertain myself with the games I made. Or I can use what I made to help myself accomplish things.”
YY Liang
YY is a nationally ranked junior tennis player. Credit: Louis Lanzano
- Favorite word: “Trompe l'oeil”
- Favorite subject: English
- How I keep calm: "Usually I don't do anything. I have this philosophy about how time works. I just let it pass," she said.
YY can’t say why exactly she likes “trompe l'oeil,” which could mean a style of painting in which objects are depicted with photographically realistic detail or illusion, according to Merriam-Webster. She remembers looking at it and deciding that she liked it, she said.
YY is a nationally ranked junior tennis player from Hartsdale. While her favorite subject is English, she’s also learning French and Chinese. She was introduced to spelling bees when she was in elementary school and won the school bee. On the day she won, she came home holding a bouquet of bee-shaped balloons.
"I felt kind of surprised and maybe a tiny bit shocked," she recalled of the moment. "Just happy in general."
YY has been home-schooled since the pandemic and didn’t return after her parents saw that she learns faster in this setting and that the flexible schedule allows her to play tennis more, said her father, Weiming Liang.
She spelled “Freon” to win the regional championship, a word she learned last year when she and her dad bought some to fix his car.
To YY, tennis and spelling contests are vastly different.
“Tennis competitions are basically like boxing. You have to attack the other person, or they'll attack you,” she said. “Spelling bee is, as a lot of people said, just everyone against the dictionaries.”
Dandan Zou covers education for Newsday. Previously, she worked for a community newspaper in Maryland and a personal finance magazine in Washington, D.C.
