Click photos for larger image.
Rebecca Droke, Post-Gazette Ellie Pierce of Murrysville reacts, at left, to correctly spelling "Esperanto", then reacts again, top, upon realizing she's won the 57th Annual Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Spelling Bee for Western Pennsylvania at the Frick Fine Arts Building in Oakland yesterday.

When Ellie Pierce spelled "Esperanto," she confidently gripped the microphone with her left hand, and pronounced each letter slowly and smoothly.

Though she didn't hesitate in spelling it, the sixth-grader at Franklin Regional Middle School had never before seen the word, which means an artificial international language based as far as possible on words common to the chief European languages. But she mentally sounded it out well enough to win yesterday's 57th annual Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Spelling Bee.

It was the second trip to the bee for 12-year-old Ellie, who placed first this year and second last year at the Westmoreland County spelling bee. Now for bigger challenges: She has won an expense-paid trip to Washington, D.C. in May to compete in the National Spelling Bee sponsored by Scripps Howard.

To prepare for yesterday's competition, Ellie reviewed words on the bee's standard list, the Paideia, with her parents for half-an-hour each night in the month leading up to the bee. She figures she'll increase that to an hour per night before she competes in D.C.

"She's a cool competitor who just loves to win," said Bo Pierce of his daughter, who just last month was a top-ten state finalist in the Reader's Digest National Word Power Challenge.

"But Dad," Ellie answered, "who doesn't love to win?"

Also trying to win yesterday were 31 finalists, who were pared down from 91 semi-finalists from all over Western Pennsylvania. As the competition is composed of students through eighth grade, Ellie was among the youngest competitors to spell in yesterday's traditional oral bee.

But she was in good company by the end.

Four of the top five finalists were in sixth grade, the other was in seventh grade, and they were all still sitting on the Frick Fine Arts Building stage by Round 11. The bee was co-sponsored by the Carnegie Science Center.

Ellie was the only student to correctly spell her word in that round, and she sailed through "cossack," which is a member of a favored military caste of Russian frontiersmen and border guards in Czarist Russia. Ellie hadn't before seen "cossack" either, but she figured it resembled "hassock," the word she spelled correctly to win her school's spelling bee earlier this year.

As the other spellers in the round misspelled their words -- there were six spellers in total -- they rounded out the top five positions in the order they misspelled them. In other words, the students who placed second through sixth all misspelled their words in the same round.

Call it the luck of draw -- just like the words the students had to spell.

Besides Ellie, the five students still left in Round 11 were Anthony Michael Speeney of Geibel Catholic in Connellsville; Michael Forrest of St. Teresa of Avila in Perrysville; Erinn Enany of Connellsville Junior High East; Marc Blair of Hillcrest Intermediate in North Huntingdon; and Abigail Evangeliste of Holy Trinity in Ligonier.

Anthony sat down after "fiefdom," and Michael was out after "vagary." Erinn stumbled on "mimetic," Marc missed "felicitous," and runner-up Abigail missed "Anglophilia." All five received prizes.

When Ellie correctly spelled "Esperanto" to win the title, she quickly called her best friend and said she felt "overwhelmed."

And yes, she can spell it.