Ortiz Elementary School fifth-grader Sariah Titus might be small in stature, but she’s a mighty competitor. She proved it back in February when she topped 23 other competitors to win the 24th annual Big Country Spelling Bee.

That win, which came when she correctly spelled the word “harrumph” in the contest sponsored by the Kiwanis Club of Abilene, propelled her to the Scripps National Spelling Bee in National Harbor, Maryland, May 28-June 2. She also won a Merriam-Webster Dictionary, a 2023 U.S. Mint Proof Set donated by Jay Sugarman, and an online subscription to Encyclopedia Britannica.

Bee Week is a week-long experience for spellers and families that includes special events, educational workshops, excursions into Washington, D.C., and more. The highlight of the week, of course, is the actual spelling bee, which begins with prelims on May 30, and concludes with the finals on June 1.

Titus will try to become the 16th Texan to win the contest, which began in 1925 when 11-year-old Frank Neuhauser from Kentucky won by correctly spelling the word “Gladioulus.” That correct spelling earned him $500 in gold coins and a visit with President Calvin Coolidge. Those gold coins would be worth more than $8,700 in today’s market, far short of the more than $50,000 that will go to this year’s winner. And while a visit with President Joe Biden is not on the table, Titus is more worried about going to the Library of Congress while she’s in the nation’s capital.

“We’re going to do a scavenger hunt with the rest of the group when we get there, so I’ll get to meet the other competitors from across the country,” Titus said. “I think that will be a lot of fun. Then we’ll walk around the National Mall and take a tour of that area, which will be a lot of walking, so I don’t know how much fun that will be.”

Since she won the Abilene contest, Titus has been working on learning spellings, definitions, sentence usage, and word origin for 450 words that will be part of the national contest. Last year’s champion, Harini Logan from San Antonio, correctly spelled the word “moorhen” in the first spell-off in contest history to win first place.

“I usually study about 2-3 hours every day, and I’ve put a lot of work in on it,” Titus said. “These words are really hard, so my pattern right now is to look each word over, write it down, spell it loud, learn how to use it in a sentence, and the definition of each word.”

It’s that kind of work ethic that helped Titus who, as she said, began spelling words like pterodactyl and xylophone “out of the blue” before she even started school, skip right through kindergarten and into first grade. Literally. 

“When she showed up for ‘Meet the Teacher’ night as a kindergartner, she read aloud all of the classroom rules, which gave the teacher (Annette Shelton) an indication that Sariah might be slightly above kindergarten,” Ortiz principal Carmen Crane said. “After she went through some additional assessments, she was moved to the first grade after the first six weeks. When she says she’s been spelling since she can remember, she’s really been doing that.”

And her confidence, despite the difficulty presented by the words and the challenge of beating the best adolescent spellers in the country, is where it needs to be.

“I’m nervous, but I’m confident,” she said. “I know I’m going to be in front of a bunch of people and maybe on TV, but I know I can win this thing. I’ve been spelling since I was very young and love to learn. I know I’ve got to learn all of these words, but it’s something I want to do.”

Crane agrees with her assessment of her abilities, saying, “She could win that thing, for sure.”

“She’s tiny, but she’s mighty,” Crane said. “Generally, as a principal, when you know a kid’s name the first week of school, sometimes it’s not for great reasons. But I’ve known Sariah’s name from the first week I was here (August 2020), and it’s because she’s spunky and always doing the right thing.”