OXON HILL, Md. — Trevor Paulsen, a sixth-grade student at Harrisburg Middle School, spelled two words correctly in front of judges at the 2012 Scripps National Spelling Bee Wednesday, but did not score well enough on the written part of the competition to advance to today’s finals.
Trevor, 12, qualified to compete against 277 other spellers at the 85th annual bee when he won the Arkansas spelling bee in March with the word “neonatology.”
Early in the day Wednesday Trevor appeared to trip up momentarily, but he quickly gained composure.
Wearing a bright American-flag shirt, Trevor stood in the center of the stage with his hands clasped and waited for Jacques Bailly to give him his word.
Bailly, the contest’s official pronouncer, said the word - “pullet” and then gave Paulsen the definition.
“This is a young hen,” he said.
Trevor hesitated, and then started to sound out the letters.
“P-u... oh wait.”
After a moment, Trevor collected himself.
“Ok, let me start over, “ hesaid, before reeling off the rest of the word, letter by letter.
During a break in the competition, Trevor said that he had come across the word during his preparations for the contest.
But standing onstage in the glare of the lights that were set up for the ESPN 3 cameras, and looking at the audience made him nervous.
“It’s a stressful situation,” he said.
Later in the day, Trevor showed little hesitation as he confidently spelled his second word, “beetewk”” - which is a Russian breed of heavy draft horses.
Trevor, who was sponsored by the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, was accompanied by his father, William, who is a math professor at Arkansas State University, and his mother, Cynthia, who is a medical technologist at Arkansas Methodist Medical Center in Paragould.
It was the Paulsen family’s second trip to Washington in recent weeks. On May 12, Trevor competed in the National History Bee, which will be aired on the History Channel on Friday.
One of only two sixth-graders in that contest, which was mostly seventh- and eighth graders, Trevor didn’t make the history bee finals.
On Wednesday, spellers moved on to the finals based on their performance in two rounds of spelling onstage and a computer test they took earlier in the day. In the computer round, spellers were asked to spell 50 words, 25 of which counted toward their final score.
The students were given one point for each word spelled right on the written section and 3 points for each correct world spelled in the live competition.
Today, the top 50 spellers will compete in an elimination contest in the semi-finals at 9 a.m. Central time on ESPN 2 and the finals, which will be shown at 7 p.m. on ESPN.
Trevor, who enjoys watching history documentaries and playing the computer game Civilization, had mixed feelings about the written test.
“Some words were gimmes and some words were crazy,” he said.
After the finalists were announced, and his name wasn’t on the list, Trevor remained upbeat.
“At least I got here,” he said. “On your first year, you don’t know what to expect.”
His mother stood next to Trevor and beamed.
“I’m proud of you, little man,” she said.
Front Section, Pages 2 on 05/31/2012