On June 1, Marlene Schaff of Lake Forest was all about spelling.
“It was very exciting,” the 14-year-old said. “I was nervous in my finals round.”
She made it through a test, then spelled three words correctly until being knocked out of competition with the word “cleidoic.”
With that, she left the stage of the Scripps National Spelling Bee as the 23rd best speller in the nation.
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“I’m licking my wounds a bit but doing well,” Marlene said Saturday.
In 2016, Marlene barely missing getting into the final round, tying for 46th place, according to the Scripps National Spelling Bee website.
“We estimate that 11 million students participate in our program across the country and in other parts of the world,” Bee spokeswoman Valerie Miller said in an email.
The competition is not for the faint of vocabulary. In a sectional qualifying round this year, Marlene spelled “sarcoidosis,” an inflammatory disease that affects multiple organs, according to the WebMD website.
“The spelling bee loves weird medical maladies,” said Marlene’s mother, Michele Schaff.
This year Marlene made it to the final competition, held at a convention center in Maryland just outside Washington, D.C.
“There were a ton of photographers and more cameras than I could count,” Marlene said. “It was broadcast on ESPN. There’s applause and when someone misses his or her word, there are some sighs and groans.”
Preparing for the national spelling bee requires plenty of work.
“For national and regionals, I memorize difficult spelling words, roots, combined forms and language patterns,” Marlene said.
Spelling is not Marlene’s only interest. She fences, reads classic American and English literature – though her mother also makes her read Plato and Aristotle – and draws. She’s fluent in German, and took the SAT in seventh grade, her mother said.
Having aged out of competing, Marlene is working toward her next goal.
“She is hoping to complete her bachelor’s degree before she turns 20,” Michele said.
“I would like to go to a British college,” Marlene said. “They test more of your in-depth knowledge on a subject.”
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