LISBON — Columbiana County 2025 Spelling Bee Champion Maureen Bone will put her spelling and vocabulary talents to the test on the national stage beginning Tuesday when she competes in the Scripps National Spelling Bee.

“I just want to spell at least one word correctly,” the 12-year-old Beaver Local seventh grader said with a smile.

Since March when she spelled “octonocular” correctly to win the county spelling bee and a trip to the national bee, she’s been studying the 2025 Words of Champions and using the Word Club app through Scripps to prepare.

“I’m a very color-coded person and I’ve been highlighting words on the paper copy of the list. Purple for ones I need to look up and blue for ones I should look at,” Maureen said.

Word Club gives options, such as spelling quiz or vocabulary choices. Her advice for county spellers is to “just study a lot. That’s provided me the best results.”

She said she’s looking forward to getting to meet some people who are on the same level intellectually and into the same kind of stuff that she is. Some of that other “stuff” includes competitive figure skating, playing the flute in concert band, playing recreational league softball, crocheting, sewing and reading.

A member of the Beaver County Figure Skating Club at the Brady’s Run Ice Arena in nearby Pennsylvania for three years, Maureen has mastered a number of skating jumps and moves, such as the waltz jump, toe loop, salchow, half flip, half lutz, full lutz, full flip, axel loop. She’s currently working on the double salchow. She’s won first place in three competitions and competes at the Aspire 4 level.

“I want to make it to Skate Games of America,” she said, a competition only held every two years, with the next in 2026.

For band, she can’t march until high school, but in eighth grade she’s planning to join the percussion pit. She’s participated in solo and ensemble for both instrumental and vocal, earning at least three superior ratings. She’s also currently crocheting a baby blanket, volunteers at the Columbiana County Dog Pound and just finished the book “An Abundance of Katherines” by John Green.

Maureen has three bookshelves full of books and said she reads all kinds of books, even some nonfiction. She has the Percy Jackson series, Icarus by K. Ancrum, Dystopian Mystery books, but said her favorite author is Lemony Snicket who wrote “A Series of Unfortunate Events.” Another author she likes is Ransom Riggs.

Even with all the reading and spelling, her favorite subject is math, saying she has a really good teacher this year.

When asked if she had a special outfit picked out to wear for the spelling bee, Maureen said she’s wearing jeans and a flowered shirt with blue flowers, along with other outfits throughout the week. Her mom, Heather Moser, who teaches biology, chemistry and physics at Beaver Local High School, said a friend of hers years ago gave her a necklace with a ginkgo leaf and said it was for Maureen. Heather gave Maureen the necklace the morning of the county bee, noting that ginkgo is for memory, so she’s going to wear it at the national bee.

Maureen will travel with her mom and dad, Steven Bone, to Washington, D. C. for spelling week, with plans to take part in the Memorial Day picnic on Monday, old town trolley tours around D.C. and the Bee Week Bash. She’ll also have support from afar from her grandparents, with Heather saying “they’re all very proud of her.”

“I think it is such a fabulous opportunity for her. Her dad and I are so proud of her,” Heather said, noting that she works hard. “I think it’s going to be really exciting. I’m excited to see how you do. I’m excited for you to have the experience.”

Maureen said she’s really looking forward to the resort hotel. After the county bee, the family went to D.C. for one day to attend “Legacy on Ice” to see some of America’s elite skaters, such as Ilia Malinin, who can do a quad axel, Amber Glenn and Isabeau Levito. They also went to National Archives and saw the Magna Carta, which she’s been studying in history class.

She’s been studying for the bee every day said said “for future spellers, I just want them to know if you make it to nationals, that’s a huge achievement. You’re basically competing against yourself to see how far you can make it.”

As number 172 out of 243 spellers, she’s expecting to compete on the stage between 2:10 and 4 p.m. Tuesday. Each speller will compete in up to two rounds when they have their turn in the preliminaries, spelling a word first and then answering a multiple choice vocabulary question. Spellers who make it out of the first two rounds move on to the third round of the preliminaries consisting of a written test which includes both spelling and vocabulary questions. Depending on how they do, spellers could advance to the quarterfinals, which take place from 8 a.m. to 12:45 p.m. Wednesday.

The preliminaries, quarterfinals and semifinals will be live streamed on Bounce XL, Grit Xtra, Laff More and spellingbee.com, with the semifinals live from 2:30 to 6:30 p.m., but aired on Ion from 8 to 10 p.m. Wednesday. The finals will be aired live on Ion starting at 8 p.m. Thursday.

As county champion, Bone won the champion plaque, along with a one-year subscription to Merriam-Webster Unabridged Online donated by Merriam-Webster, the Samuel Louis Sugarman Award donated by Jay Sugarman, a one-year subscription to Britannica Online Premium donated by Encyclopedia Britannica and the invitation to compete in the 2025 Scripps National Spelling Bee in Washington, D.C., including a six-night stay at the Gaylord National Resort for the champion and one parent, room and tax paid by the the three Columbiana County newspapers, the Morning Journal, Salem News and The Review. The county bee is co-sponsored by the newspapers, along with the Columbiana County Educational Service Center which coordinates the event.

To learn more about the bee, visit spellingbee.com.

mgreier@mojonews.com