Thirteen-year-old Calvin Lau, an eighth-grader at Schweinfurt Middle School in Germany, won the 23rd annual European PTA Spelling Bee Final on Saturday. (Kevin Dougherty / S&S)
KAISERSLAUTERN, Germany — When he was in the fourth grade, Calvin Lau placed fourth in the annual European spelling bee. And so he assumed he would return the following year a bit wiser on the words.
That was four years ago, and Calvin didn’t get another crack at winning it all until Saturday, when he bested 42 other contestants to win the 23rd annual European PTA Spelling Bee.
“I thought I could make it,” Calvin said after the bee. “This time my dad was telling me to stay confident.”
The Schweinfurt Middle School student won when Alexis Claflin of Würzburg Middle School misspelled the word “obstetrician” and Calvin correctly recited the letters for “appellate.”
The win came in the 14th round, which started with just Calvin and Alexis remaining.
For winning the bee, Calvin gets to represent the U.S. military community in Europe in the Scripps Howard National Spelling Bee in Washington, D.C., May 31 through June 2. He also received a $100 savings bond and a $25 gift certificate from the Army and Air Force Exchange Service.
“It feels incredible,” Calvin said of his victory. “This morning, I was praying to God” for divine guidance.
When Calvin finished fourth in 2001 as a fourth-grader, he figured he would return to the bee the next year. But he lost in his own school’s spelling bee the following year and Schweinfurt Middle School didn’t take part in the European bee in 2003 and 2004.
This year’s annual spelling bee, hosted by the European Parent-Teachers Association, was held at Kaiserslautern High School. In all, 45 students between the third and eighth grades qualified for the bee, although two contestants didn’t show.
By the end of the fourth round, more than half of the students were sitting in the audience, having misspelled a word given to them by moderator Alice Owen. The last 30 minutes moved quickly as the final eight began to drop out in fairly rapid succession.
“I didn’t think I would get that far,” Alexis said of her second-place finish.
Calvin said his strategy was fairly simple: He repeatedly asked Owen for definitions and to use the word in a sentence, as permitted by the rules.
He also studied like a fiend on the drive to Kaiserslautern.
Said Calvin: “I just wanted to be careful.”
