A stellar speller has earned his spot on the national stage.
Jason Khan, a student at McAuliffe Middle School in the Los Alamitos Unified School District, won the 2022 Orange County Spelling Bee this past weekend.
“I feel great,” a humble and cheerful Jason said during a phone interview on March 7. “I studied really hard for this.”
As champion, the eighth grader will now represent Orange County in the 2022 Scripps National Spelling Bee taking place in Washington, D.C. in late May and early June.
“I am blown away by Jason’s accomplishment this week with the O.C. Spelling Bee,” McAuliffe Principal Dr. Ryan Weiss-Wright wrote in a statement to Spotlight Schools. “Jason is a true example to his peers for what it means to work hard and persevere to achieve your goals. This is an amazing achievement!”
It was not easy to become O.C.’s top speller.
The county-level competition began last week with 94 sixth, seventh and eighth graders who had emerged as the best spellers from their schools or districts. They first took part in a written spelling and vocabulary test, according to a press release from the Orange County Department of Education, which co-sponsored the event with The Orange County Register.
The top 26 spellers then advanced to the final oral round that took place on March 5 at the OCDE’s Costa Mesa campus.
Students tackled words like “trellis,” “apparatus,” and “privatim.”
After three hours, and twenty-eight rounds, it all came down to Jason’s winning word: “ankh,” which is a cross-like symbol with a loop at the top.
Jason and the second and third place finishers each earned a trophy and a cash award.
“It was very stressful,” Jason said of the contest, sounding relieved and astonished at the same time and added, “but I tried to keep calm and just remember what I had practiced.”
Jason said he studied up to an hour most days in the weeks leading up to the competition. He memorized words and definitions, tested himself, and then went back and quizzed himself again and again.
Two days before the spelling bee, Jason stepped up his studying and practiced for five hours each day. He said his brother and father helped drill him on all of the words.
Jason said he is a member of the Spelling Bee Club at McAuliffe where he attends weekly meetings. This is his first time competing in the Orange County Spelling Bee. He reported getting second place in a spelling contest when he was a student at Los Alamitos Elementary.
In a matter of weeks, Jason’s spelling skills will be tested in one of the highest-profile competitions. More than 200 people from across the country are expected to compete in this year’s Scripps National Spelling Bee. Jason’s travel expenses will be covered by The Orange County Register.
The semifinals and finals of the Scripps National Spelling Bee will be televised during primetime on June 1 and 2 on ION and Bounce. Actor and literacy advocate LeVar Burton will host.
According to Wikipedia, no one from Orange County has ever won the contest since it started in 1925.
“I feel like there are definitely a lot of expectations but I know if I just study hard enough I’ll be able to do pretty well,” Jason said.
With the contest coming up in late May, Jason will be doing drills with his dictionary again soon.
“I think I might take a couple days, at the most a week [off], but then I’ll get right back to studying.”
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