"I really like words" says LA County Regional Spelling Bee champ

It was a battle of the brains, as young competitors stood at the microphone, faced a panel of adults as they were asked to spell some rather obscure words.

For sixth-grader Oliver Halkett, who really enjoys spelling bees, his love of words and language carried him to the top of the LA County Regional Spelling Bee, with a first-place win.

The LA County Regional Spelling Bee just wrapped up its annual run March 21, where 42 competitors in grades 4-8 pitted their linguistic skills against one another.

Halkett, from The Mirman School spelled "uliginous" correctly and then "melologue" to win first place.

Coming in second was sixth-grader Viviana Chen from Walnut Valley Unified School District, who lost to Halkett over the word "uliginous," but impressively beat out the other 40 competitors.

Both talked about their how they prepared for the competition.

"I really like studying, I really like words and I really like competition, so I really wanted to do well and I just studied. My parents helped me, my family helped, and I just really love spelling bees," Halkett said.

Chen said she studied every day for her school bee, then moving on to regionals she said she spent more time on root words.

As the top scoring 4-6 graders, Chen and Halkett will compete in the CA State Elementary Bee on April 27 at San Joaquin County Office of Education, which is for students in grades 4-6.

Halkett will represent Los Angeles at the Scripps National Spelling Bee the week of May 27th in the Washington DC area.