GREENSBORO, N.C. — Guilford County Schools crowned a W-I-N-N-E-R at its spelling bee on Tuesday. Thirty students participated, but only one made it to the end.
Nam Tran is a seventh grader at Brown Summit Middle School. He won after 18 rounds of the competition.
“Well, I feel really honored for winning the spelling bee,” Nam said. “I really didn't think I would win, I just studied really hard and I tried my best."
Nam said he had to learn about 4,000 words for the competition. As for the winning word, it was "probative." The definition is having the quality or function of proving or demonstrating something.
“I learned a lot of cool words, sluggard, which is someone who is very sluggish,” Nam said. “It's a very fun word to say and I think it's one of my favorite words. With spelling, there are a lot of grammar rules and grammatical rules that you can learn. It's very fun to spell because I get to learn all those. Especially in the spelling bee, there are a lot of words from other languages, so I got to learn some grammatical rules from their languages as well."
Chloe Brim, a seventh grader at Allen Middle School, was the runner-up. Nam will move on to the regional spelling bee next in Charlotte. His parents said they couldn't be prouder.
“He's been practicing day and night very hard, anytime he has time after doing homework,” his father Trung Tran said. “I just see him sitting and just staring at the list of words and trying to learn about them.”
“As parents, we just support and encourage him in whatever he needs, but we don't put any pressure on him,” his mother Tram Truong said. “We want him to enjoy the journey, we want him to enjoy learning."
When Nam isn't studying his words, he enjoys playing piano and chess, and listening to and dancing to K-pop. He said he wants to be a civil engineer when he grows up.