Erika Hill’s confidence wavered just once, only for a fleeting moment.
With the eighth annual Gazette-Star Spelling Bee down from 18 to three contestants, Erika said she could feel the butterflies churning in her stomach at the very start of the final round.
But once second-place finisher Jessica Gliss misspelled ‘‘archipelago” and Erika heard her final word, ‘‘recidivism,” her confidence was restored, she said. She knew the word right away.
Erika, 13, took a deep breath, calmly leaned toward the microphone and finished the word with ease, becoming the county’s eighth spelling champion in front of a packed auditorium on Friday at the University of Maryland’s Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center.
As the champion, she received a trophy, a $100 gift card from Staples stationery store, a $200 savings bond, a one-year subscription for the Britannica.com online encyclopedia, a dictionary and a trip for four to Disney World.
She will represent Prince George’s County May 29-30 at the National Spelling Bee in Washington, D.C.
‘‘When it was down to two, I got very scared,” said Erika, a Laurel resident and eighth-grader at Martin Luther King Jr. Middle School in Beltsville. ‘‘But when I heard my word, I knew it and it all worked out.”
Erika’s father, Warren Hill, said that before the competition, his daughter expressed confidence in her spelling prowess and told him to expect a win.
‘‘She told me after the orientation on Wednesday that she was going to win,” Warren Hill said. ‘‘She had confidence in herself and she did it. I’m very proud of her.”
Asked after the competition what it felt like being the last speller left on stage and receiving an ovation from those in attendance, Erika attempted to find the right words to express her delight.
‘‘It was like, I can’t really explain it. It was just a really good feeling,” she said, smiling.
Erika’s mother Lauren Hill described her daughter as a quiet, diligent student who enjoys reading, writing poetry, playing the viola and studying, particularly Latin and her favorite subject: science.
Erika recently was accepted into the science and technology program at Eleanor Roosevelt High School. She said she wants to be a psychologist.
‘‘I wanted to go there because science is really interesting to me and [Roosevelt High] is a really good school,” Erika said.
Jessica, 13, an eighth-grader at William Wirt Middle School in Riverdale, and Genarra Jones, 12, a seventh-grader at Thurgood Marshall Middle School in Temple Hills, tied for second place.
Both received a dictionary, a $50 Staples gift card, a $20 Amazon.com gift card, a $100 savings bond and a one-year subscription for the Britannica.com online encyclopedia.
Like all of the competitors, Jessica and Genarra earned a spot in the countywide competition by winning their schools’ spelling bees.
Jessica said that as she prepared for the bee, she made it a point to focus on French words, which she said were challenging and gave her some trouble. That focus paid off when she was able to successfully spell ‘‘rendezvous” to move onto the next round.
Jessica said she had no regrets about her second-place finish.
‘‘You win some, you lose some,” she said.
Genarra said she took every last moment to prepare for the competition.
‘‘Even on the way here, she was in the car practicing,” said Shantae Holmes, her mother. ‘‘She worked real hard.”
Genarra said that next year she does not plan on coming in second.
‘‘It feels good coming in second, but next time I want to be first,” she said.
E-mail Jonathan Stein at jstein@gazette.net.
