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On Tuesday 11-year-old Jie Laboriante of Mcallen’s hard work and determination took her one step closer toward the top.
In other words, she moved closer to her pinnacle. Or apogee. Perhaps you’d prefer acme, or apex.
Jie would almost certainly be familiar with all of those words, and a good deal of more complicated ones, a skill that helped her sail through her first day at the Scripps National Spelling Bee in Washington D.C. Tuesday.
Now a quarter finalist, the Reynaldo G. Garza Elementary School fifth grader will again head to the podium Wednesday.
Jie won AIM Media Texas Rio Grande Valley’s 34th annual Regional Spelling Bee in March after a nail-biter of a finishing round.
Tuesday’s preliminary round wasn’t quite as dramatic. Jie was asked to spell two words and correctly identify the meaning of another word.
The first two prompts were straightforward enough. Jie spelled “nudibranch;” basically a fancy word for sea slugs (Who knew?). She correctly described grandiloquent as “marked by pompous or bombastic language”— an epithet Jie will be well equipped to earn if she ever has a notion.
That second spelling prompt though, that was the tricky one. The last prompt didn’t come from the list of words Jie had rigorously studied. It could be just about anything. The chances for a curveball word were high.
“It’s another word, but it comes outside the list that we have,” she said after Tuesday’s preliminary round. “So it’s pretty much any word in the dictionary.”
Jie was nervous about it. Joseline Abadilla, Jie’s mother and study partner, was just as nervous watching her.
They needn’t have fretted. The word was “kneadman.” Jie nailed it.
What does it mean?
“I don’t remember,” Jie said a touch bashfully Tuesday evening. Apparently it refers to “a worker that tends a machine which kneads flour paste for macaroni products.” (Who would know?)
She didn’t sound it, but Jie was a touch anxious looking forward to Wednesday’s competition.
She’d put in a lot of work to be the best.
Saturday was Jie’s birthday. They celebrated, and had a party. Afterwards, it was back to studying for the spelling bee.
Jie and her mother study like that everyday: three hours on weekdays, all day on weekends, often until midnight.
They’ll use flashcards, recitations, Q&As, multiple choice questions.
“Everything that we can think of to review it. It was a lot of work,” Abadilla laughs.
Why put in all that work? Jie has a fairly straightforward reply.
“It’s fun in general, and I learn new things,” she said.
More information on this year’s bee is available on its website.
