By Ansley Haman
Scripps Howard News Service
WASHINGTON -- Brown hair and hands - that's all Scripps National Spelling Bee judges could see of 10-year-old Veronica Penny on Thursday.
The fourth grader from Hamilton, Ontario, buried her face in her hands each of the four times she correctly spelled a word, advancing with 44 other competitors to Friday's semifinals, which will air live on ESPN.
"It helps me think better," she said of her microphone ritual.
Veronica is one of seven Canadians remaining in the Bee, which began with 288 competitors - the Bee's largest class ever. No Canadian has ever won the Bee, which still retains "national" in its title even though it has allowed international competitors from English-speaking countries since the 1970s.
After each word, Veronica returned to her chair, dangled her black-and-white, high-top Shaq basketball shoes from her seat and grinned at her mother, Pam Penny. Pam says she never expected her home-schooled youngest of five to make it into the semifinals.
"She's a prodigy, a virtuoso," Penny said of Veronica, whose fourth-round word was "paleethnology," the cultural or social anthropology of prehistoric humans.
Veronica said she determined the spelling by analyzing the two separate roots.
"Why would I change paleo?" she said she asked herself.
Veronica's only tutoring came from her four siblings, the oldest of whom has won three Hamilton spelling bees, Penny said.
"Webster's Third, that's all we had," Penny said of the dictionary they used to prepare for the contest.
Penny, who runs a home-based Web site hosting business, said she doesn't know where her children learned to spell so well. She admits she dropped out of high school, only to return after having her third child.
Penny said she and Veronica were discussing her decision to return to high school earlier in their trip.
"I became smart after my third child," she said.
Prior to the fourth round, the mother and daughter snuck to the side of the room to relax cross-legged on the floor. Penny said her daughter wasn't just stressed.
"It's not nervous," Penny said. "It's terrified."
Another parent, David Smith, said he gets nervous every time any of the competitors approaches the microphone.
"It doesn't matter if it's your child or not," said Smith, the father of two competitors, brothers Jake and Alec Smith.
Jake, 13, will represent the Boulder (Colo.) Daily Camera in Friday's semifinals. Last year he placed 60th in the Bee while representing the Rocky Mountain News of Denver.
Unlike many regional spelling contests, the Rocky Mountain News Colorado State Spelling Bee does not allow winners to repeat. So Jake and his father moved to an apartment in the Boulder area and enrolled in Aspen Creek K-8 School, where he qualified for this year's contest by winning that region's Bee. His younger brother, Alec remained at Summit View Elementary School in Highlands Ranch, Colo. and won this year's Rocky Mountain News Colorado State Spelling Bee title.
Unlike his older brother, however, Alec, 11, will not be competing Friday. He misspelled the word spatiography (a science that deals with the region beyond the earth's atmosphere) and did not advance.
ESPN will broadcast the semifinals live Friday from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. EDT. ABC will carry the finals live Friday evening from 8 to 10 p.m. Prizes for the winner includes a $30,000 Scripps award for the champion.
Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, http://www.scrippsnews.com
