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Getting through his words as fast as he could was part of Yifan Zhang's winning strategy at Saturday's 40th annual Washington County Spelling Bee.
After correctly spelling "intolerable" in the 22nd round of competition at South Hagerstown High School, the Boonsboro Middle School eighth grader will represent the county in the Scripps National Spelling Bee at the end of May at the Gaylord National Hotel and Convention Center near Washington, D.C.
Yifan, 14, won the seventh grade contest last year, which just encouraged him to keep studying for this year.
"I feel like it was definitely the result of a lot of work, so in a sense, it was expected, but there's always an element of luck, so there were some nerves involved," he said.
Crediting his parents, Yanhong Wang and Run Zhang of Hagerstown, as instrumental in his success, Yifan said they practiced a reiterative process to get the words down.
Ultimately, he still had "quite a battle" to spell through before outlasting 17 other students from around the Washington County.
As for representing the area at the national competition, Yifan said he was nervous but excited at the prospect.
"Honestly, that's slightly nerve-wracking," he said. "I'm going to study accordingly and see how it goes."
Seventh-grade winner Neilson Parrott, 12 of Hagerstown, is also no stranger to the Spelling Bee winner's circle.
The Hagerstown home-school student is the son of Maryland Del. Neil C. Parrott, R-Washington, and April Parrott. The Parrott family has enjoyed recent success at the Bee as Neilson took home the sixth-grade trophy last year, while his sister, Charity, went on to compete in the 2018 Scripps National Spelling Bee.
This year, "greengage," a sweet greenish fruit resembling a small plum, clenched Neilson's victory, even though he admitted he didn't know what it was — just how to spell it.
The seventh-graders also had to battle some technical problems with the microphone system, causing several contestants to ask for repeated words, sentences and definitions.
Neilson said he had studied for about two hours every day for the past two to three weeks, but spent all of Saturday morning before the Bee going over the possible words.
Overall, he said he felt pretty good about things, except for some of the German-rooted words that were "impossible if you didn't study."
Neilson said he did have to think twice about "knish," a Jewish Central and Eastern European snack food, which he said he thought was pronounced differently.
Even with the sixth-and seventh-grade titles under his belt, Neilson said he doesn't want to feel too confident going into the eighth-grade competition next year.
"I'm going to have to study a lot," he said.
Sixth grade winner Jacynta Jones, 12 of Halfway, took top honors after correctly spelling "queendom" and "contraction."
The student at Springfield Middle School said she was really proud of everyone for being able to spell so well and be confident, even with weird words like "waywiser," an instrument for measuring the distance traversed by a walker, vehicle or ship.
"Frankenstein" in the third round nearly tripped her up, she said.
Jacynta said she didn't stress herself out too much preparing for the Spelling Bee, practicing for 30 minutes to an hour at least every other day over the past month, oftentimes between classes.
"I used to actually be a really bad speller, but my dad got me a dictionary and I kind of learned how to spell from that," she said.
Saturday's spelling bee was sponsored by Herald-Mail Media.
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