For weeks, the Isom Elementary School fifth grader gave up some of her favorite hobbies to make sure she was ready.
Lily Allen spent at least 20 minutes daily for weeks studying spelling. She gave up playing outside, drawing and sometimes, reading.
All of her work paid off.
On Tuesday, Allen, the daughter of Jerilyn Allen, out-spelled 19 other spelling bee participants from across the county for spelling glory. She was named the 2019 Johnson County Spelling Bee champion.
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Participants were third-, fourth- and fifth-graders who won spelling bees at their schools. The spelling bee was co-sponsored by the Daily Journal and the Franklin Community Teachers Association.
Each of the students had to win a spelling bee at their own school to be eligible to participate.
Ryli Payet, the runner-up and a third grader at Northwood Elementary School, misspelled grimace. Allen spelled grimace correctly and went on to spell intercede, earning her champion status.
For 10 rounds, the students breezed through words such as drizzle, guppy, majority and yearbook until one by one they missed words. Their downfalls were survival, impediment, pinnacle and thickener.
Allen sailed through admire, trample, terrific, vertical, undecided, prototype and sabotage expertly, never asking the judges to use the words in a definition or sentence.
Payet and Allen battled it out as the final two competitors for two rounds. Allen spelled mediator correctly. Payet missed lethargic. Lethargic was kicked to Allen who also misspelled the word. Payet was then given grimace.
Every time a word came to Allen, she took a deep breathe and spelled it slowly and carefully to make sure she spelled it correctly, she said.
Allen loves reading and learning new words, which has allowed her to become good at spelling, she said.
"I really like to spell, I like to learn new words," Allen said.
Reading is one of Allen’s favorite hobbies because it allows her to learn new words, she said.
While she is reading, she will look up words she doesn’t know and learn from them, Allen said.
"If there are words I don’t know and I come across them, I study them," she said.
Allen also credits being involved in theater and other hobbies for allowing her to spell well. Those hobbies help her concentrate on spelling later, she said.
"It helps me relax my brain,"Allen said.
And being a good speller is imperative to future success, which is also why Allen enjoys the subject, she said.
"When you get a job or go to college, it is important to spell," Allen said.
