Spelling Bee Goes Down to the Final Word

Miles Little smiled knowingly when he heard his final word in the 2025 USC Upstate Regional Spelling Bee on Saturday morning.

MILES LITTLE WON, AND ELLIOT HARRISON IS RUNNER-UP

Pronouncer Keiko Bridwell, a four-time spelling bee champion, told Little his word could be confused with another word.

"Alluvial -- it's an adjective relating to or composed of clay, silt, sand, gravel, or similar loose organic material deposited by running water -- alluvial," she said.

Little, an eighth-grader at McCracken Middle School, quickly spelled A-L-L-U-V-I-A-L, repeated "alluvial" to the judges, and heard "that is correct" from head judge Melissa Coy.

Little was crowned the spelling bee champion and will advance to the televised Scripps National Spelling Bee competition in May in Washington, D.C.

Elliott Harrison, a seventh-grader at Boiling Springs Middle, was runner-up.

"It immediately went into my head when I heard it, and as you might have seen, I smiled because I knew the word very well," said Little, who plays piano and is on the varsity swim team at Spartanburg High School.

Little said he studied different dictionaries and "something called the rabbit rule where there are double letters between two vowels, and that's how I knew how to spell that word, and vial is the root is how I got that."

Little said he was "ecstatic" about competing at the Scripps National Spelling Bee in Washington, D.C., and said he would keep doing what he was doing "but take it a step higher."

Allison Little said she helped her son Miles with the words for the school spelling bee but "all the credit goes to him" for Saturday's big win.

"He's always been very competitive and very driven, so whenever there's a competition, whether it's academic or likewise, he's going to take part in it," she said.