WASHINGTON — Sylvie Lamontagne ranks as one of the greatest spellers in Colorado history, having twice made the top 10 at the Scripps National Spelling Bee — including an achingly close fourth-place finish in 2016.
Now a few years wiser, Sylvie is back at it.
Not as a speller — at 15, she’s aged out — but as a coach to five students, including two from Colorado, who will compete at the three-day battle royale that starts Tuesday.
“After I was done competing I missed it (and) I wanted to stay involved some way,” Sylvie said.
But this year, Sylvie and her protégés have their work cut out for them.
The 2018 running of the bee will boast a record number of participants — 516 in all. That’s a huge jump from the 291 students who competed last year in the event, which is held just outside Washington.
The reason for the expanded field is that there’s now a new way to qualify.
Before, the only way students could enter the Scripps National Spelling Bee was by advancing through local and regional bees.
This year, admission was expanded to include anyone who had either won a school spelling bee or participated before on the national stage — and whose parents didn’t mind paying a $750 entry fee.
Nearly 240 students signed up this way, which Sylvie said makes it likely that “there will be a higher number of really good, competitive spellers.”
That presents a new obstacle for Colorado to continue its unusual success at the bee.
Though it’s just the 21st-most populous state, Colorado has produced seven winners since the contest began in 1925 — tied for the third-best in the country (Texas is tops with 11 wins).
Past Colorado winners include Pratyush Buddiga, who in 2002 became the most recent champion from the state, and Jacques Bailly, who triumphed in 1980 and now serves as the bee’s official pronouncer.
This year Colorado is sending eight competitors.
One of those, Cameron Keith, 12, participated in the 2015 and 2016 bees — finishing in a tie for 18th place the second time around.
Cameron fell short in the qualifying rounds this year but, given his past appearance at nationals, was able to enter through the new rules.
The sixth-grader from Boulder has a few aces up his sleeves too.
One of those is Sylvie, whom he described as a “really good coach.”
Another is a new method of preparation. In 2015 and 2016, Cameron said, he wore two arrowhead necklaces for good luck.
This time, he said, he isn’t relying on chance.
“I shifted to a preparing mindset instead of just luck,” Cameron said. But, he added, he still might wear the arrowhead necklaces.
Part of that training includes a focus on root words, the building blocks of language.
An example is aqua — a root meaning water. Knowing its spelling can help unlock tougher words such as aquatic, aquarium or aquamarine.
“I really try to emphasize the importance of learning roots,” Sylvie said. “If you get a word you don’t know, you can put it together from the definition if you know the roots.”
Colorado’s seven other spellers range in age from 10 to 14. The youngest is Broomfield’s Gia Bao Pham, 10, a fifth-grader from Birch Elementary School. The oldest is Denver’s Jacob Faulk, 14, an eighth-grader from Slavens K-8 School.
Also competing: Rohit Paradkar, 13, of Colorado Springs; Lauren Guo, 12, of Arvada; Matthew Rodgers, 13, of Severance, and Noah Prioste, 11, of Westminster.
A final speller to watch is Angelina Holm, 11, who in March won the 78th Annual Denver Post Colorado State Spelling Bee with the winning word of “helminthiasis,” an infestation of parasitic worms.
Angelina, now in sixth grade at the Denver School of the Arts, has competed in spelling bees since the first grade — though this is her first time at nationals.
She said her approach to spelling focuses on “linguistic patterns and root words.”
She also has a special pair of Converse sneakers decorated with an orange-slice design, which she’s worn to every bee since the third grade. They’ll be making the trip to Washington and the three-day competition, she said.
But Angelina said she wasn’t putting too much pressure on herself because this is her first time — though it’s her hope to crack the top 50.
It’s not an easy goal.
To get there, Angelina will have to survive two days of preliminary competition that will cut the field from 516 to 50 or less.
One part of that trial involves two rounds of onstage spelling Tuesday and Wednesday, when one wrong word means elimination.
In the almost-certain event there are more than 50 spellers after those rounds, the organizers will use multiple-choice test, administered Tuesday, to cull the list to no more than 50.
Sylvie said she expected that the large number of participants would mean that the “cut-off on the preliminaries test will be a couple points higher” this year than in past competitions.
From there it’s the finals and a chance at more than $42,900 in cash and prizes for the eventual champion; ESPN is scheduled to broadcast the final stage of the Scripps National Spelling Bee on Thursday at 6:30 p.m. Mountain.
But Sylvie said the competitors shouldn’t focus too much on any of that.
“Enjoy the experience and don’t stress over how well you do,” she said. “The experience and the journey (are) way more important.”