Bradenton Seventh Grader Wins State Spelling Bee Competition

BRADENTON, FL — Michelle Lupescu, a seventh grader at St. Joseph Catholic School, said that she’s “always been a pretty good speller.”

It comes naturally thanks to her strong memorization skills, the 13-year-old said. “I have a pretty good memory when it comes to stuff like that. So, I don’t need to study too much for things because when I hear stuff and I see stuff, it stays with me.”

There is one area of confusion for her when it comes to spelling, though.

“The ‘I before E’ and ‘E before I' words, 'ie' and 'ei.' I try not to mix up the two letters," Michelle said.

Knowing these words sometimes tripped her up, that’s where she focused her studies ahead of the Florida State Council of the Knights of Columbus Spelling Bee state finals in Kissimmee on Feb. 6.

“I highlighted all the words I had trouble with and reviewed them with my mom,” she said.

It’s a good thing she did. It was one of those pesky “ie” words — “hygienic” — that won her the state title.

This was the third year she’s competed in the spelling bee, which is open to students in fifth grade through high school. In Florida, the competition is open to all 469 parishes and 197 Catholic schools in the state.

Competing in the seventh- and eighth-grade division this year, she first won the spelling bee at her school. From there, she went on to the District 49 competition, which includes Palmetto, Bradenton and Sarasota, and then the Region 8 spelling bee, which extends from Palmetto to Naples. The nine regional winners across Florida, including Michelle, then faced off at the state level.

She first competed as a fifth grader in the fifth- and sixth-grade division more than two years ago, she said. Then, she didn’t make it past the spelling bee at St. Joseph. Last year, though, she made it to the regional competition.

Though she was born in Evanston, Illinois, English is Michelle’s second language. Her family is Romanian and during the first few years of her life, her family spoke mostly Romanian around her. She didn’t learn English until she was 3 years old, she said.

Her parents owned a day care in Illinois. All the teachers there were also Romanian, but they knew English as well. When she began spending time at the day care with the pre-K children and kindergartners, she started to learn English, she said.

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Her mother, Cami Lupescu, who also works at St. Joseph, said her daughter was “a very smart child,” one who was always “interested in sounds and stuff.”

“She spoke very early, at like five or six months (old). Not sentences, but enough to communicate,” Cami said. “Usually at that age, kids are doing ‘gaga’ and ‘baba’ and ‘mama’ and ‘dada,’ but she was saying what she wanted to say using two or three main words.”

Michelle also didn’t watch much television growing up. Instead, her family read to her — and eventually she read to herself — and worked on alphabet sound tablets with her, Cami said. “Chicago’s a cold city. Most of the kids spend six or seven months of the year in the house. We have to entertain our children somehow. So, we taught her the alphabet and to read. We made it a game, but it was pretty easy for her.”

She helped her daughter prepare for this year’s spelling bees and is amazed by how little Michelle needs to study.

“She doesn’t study a lot. Like I go and study for hours for something,” Cami said. “But she read the word list a couple of times. She’d highlight a word if she was not sure about it, and then she’d get it right the next time. On the way to the competition, we studied the highlighted words.”

Michelle has been a straight A student since she started school, her mother said. “She’s never gotten a B in her life.”

She’s also an avid reader. Her recent favorites are the Percy Jackson series and “The Giver” by Lois Lowry. She’s drawn to any book that falls in the fantasy and dystopian genres, though, she said.

The Bradenton teen also has a natural affinity for languages. In addition to English and Romanian, she’s currently studying Spanish.

“Romanian’s kind of similar to Spanish and Italian. We do Spanish at school. It’s pretty easy knowing two other languages already,” she said.

Michelle is also drawn to science subjects and has always wanted to become a veterinarian, though she’s unsure she would be able to handle the emotional aspect of dealing with sick animals and having to euthanize them. She’s starting to consider applying to medical school one day instead.

Her mother supports this plan, telling her that her spelling skills will help her as a doctor.

“I tell her she can go to medical school. It’s hard with lots of Latin words and names to remember, but she can do it,” Cami said.

In a non-pandemic year, each state winner in the Knights of Columbus spelling bee would head to Washington, D.C., for a national competition. Because of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, there’s no word yet on whether that trip will happen.

“We just don’t know yet,” Michelle said. “I would like to go. It would be nice. I’m hoping it happens.”

In the meantime, she’s been quietly celebrating her state win with friends and family. She’s chosen not to talk about the competition much at school.

“But my friends know about it. They’re proud of me and really excited for me,” she said. “It was pretty cool to win.”