But whether the towns are big or small, the dreams tend toward the larger. Marlee Labroo, a twelve-year-old from Quincy, Illinois, wants to go into politics, and Austin Hoke, an eleven-year-old from Anderson, Indiana, wants to design roller coasters. Kasey Leger, fourteen, from Lafayette, Louisiana, helps with the family farm and dreams of being a psychiatrist. Manasa Reddy, twelve, from Steubenville, Ohio—she loves watching professional basketball—wants to be the CEO of a large corporation.
The parents of these young dreamers come from all walks of life. The father of Hong De Sa, from Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania, is a truck driver and her mother is a hair stylist. The father of Megan Courtney, from Sedalia, Missouri, is a full-time National Guardsman and her mother is a licensed practical nurse. Emelia Armstead’s father is a hedge fund manager, Arlene Hasbrouck’s mother is a speech pathologist (Arlene has three blue goldfish as pets), and Reed Lawson’s mother is a detective. The father of Sean Hadley—Sean helped create an experiment that will be conducted in the Space Station—is an environmental engineer.
Many of the kids are strivers in several areas, involved in the Geography Bee and Mathcounts as well as spelling. Most take private music lessons and have a crowded schedule of extracurricular activities. Still, they’re actual kids, not achievement machines. Liane Libranda, twelve, from Albany, New York, never misses an episode of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation. Allison Frankfother, twelve, from Sterling, Illinois, loves to stay up late and listen to music, and really likes to shop with her friends.
The kids go to public school (173), private (38), homeschool (34), parochial (25), and charter school (3). Of the 273 spellers, 143 are eighth-graders, 65 are seventh-graders, 37 are sixth-graders, 23 are fifth-graders, and there are 5 trembling fourth-graders—it takes real courage to compete as a fourth-grader. In recent years, the crowd has been about evenly divided between girls and boys, with typically just a few more girls. This year is an anomaly—perhaps there’s something in the water—with 127 girls and 146 boys.
The Bee group, both the kids and their parents, is a pretty well-scrubbed bunch. There are no Harley Davidson T-shirts, virtually no smokers, the barbecue is alcohol free and no one seems to miss it, and the kids are very light on the piercings—if there was a single boy who wore an earring, I missed him.
There is, let’s face it, a certain nerdiness about being so involved with spelling. These are families who get their kids to bed on time, tend to eat family dinner together, and often choose vacations for their educational value. These are families where one of the parents packs nutritious snacks so that their kids won’t be eating junk food. There are no statistics to prove this, but almost all parents appear to be on their first marriage.