At the O’Brien family dining room table in Westchester, words have always mattered.
There were Scrabble games, “word of the day” challenges, and the kind of dinner table conversations where vocabulary became part of everyday life. This spring, all that wordplay paid off in a major way when 14-year-old Olive O’Brien competed at the Scripps National Spelling Bee, placing 10th place in the nation and becoming the first female speller from Los Angeles, as well as the first from an LAUSD charter school, to make the top 10.
For Olive, a student at WISH Community School from kindergarten through eighth grade, the achievement felt both surreal and exciting. After years of preparation and multiple regional competitions, she had reached the biggest stage in spelling.
Her journey began in fifth grade after she scored the highest on a classroom spelling test. That earned her a packet of advanced words and the start of a family ritual.
“I studied them every night with my dad,” Olive says. “And then I won the local spelling bee.”
That bee was sponsored by the LAX Coastal Education Foundation in 2023 with LAUSD Board Member Nick Melvoin as moderator.
That early success sparked something bigger.
Olive advanced this year to the national competition after placing second at the Los Angeles County Regional Spelling Bee. Teri Applebaum and Leslie Zoroya, Bee coordinators for the Los Angeles County of Education, were able to sponsor Olive through a grant so she could attend the National Bee in Washington, D.C.
Westchester Roots
Pearl and Stephen O’Brien moved to Westchester 13 years ago, the same day Olive turned one.
“We got the keys to our house on her first birthday,” Pearl says. “We sat her on the kitchen counter with her cake and the house keys. That was the beginning of our life here.”
The family had looked all over Los Angeles before finding Westchester.
“We didn’t know much about it at first,” Stephen says. “It was always just the place you drove past on the way to the airport. But once we saw the neighborhoods and the community, especially during the holidays with the lights on Nardian Way, it felt like home.”
That sense of community has shaped Olive as much as the spelling bees. Outside of school, she volunteers at the Emerson Avenue Community Garden and helps maintain the garden at WISH. She grows tomatoes and strawberries right now, and hopes to start growing edible flowers.
She’s also a book lover, something she credits with helping her spelling.
“I read a lot,” Olive says. “That’s how I expand my vocabulary and remember words.”
But reading alone doesn’t get you to the national finals.
Preparing for the Bee
Pearl took the lead on most of the preparation, finding word workbooks, and hiring spelling bee coach Scott Remer in February after Olive won her school bee. In Zoom lessons, Olive learned word origins and language patterns from Latin, Greek, French, Italian and even Middle English.
“It helps to understand how words work so you can figure out the ones you’ve never seen before,” Olive says.
Stephen, an associate creative director at Saatchi & Saatchi, says the process became a true family effort.
Stephen’s own love of language helped fuel Olive’s interest. A former copywriter for ESPN, he says it was exciting to find himself years later at the same event with Mina Kimes, a popular ESPN reporter, who hosted the event.
“I never imagined back then that one day I’d have a daughter competing there,” he says.
For mom Pearl, the journey was emotional in a different way.
“At the regional bees, I can’t even sit in the room,” she says, laughing. “It’s too nerve-wracking.”
At nationals, though, she pushed through.
“I made myself stay.”
The competition itself was unlike anything Olive had experienced.
She had never been to Washington, D.C. before and was struck by the history around her.
“When we were driving to the hotel, I saw all these statues and monuments and government buildings,” she says. “It felt really exciting.”
The Bee
During the spelling bee, Olive says the atmosphere was both fun and intense.
“Between turns, it’s stressful because you can hear the words getting harder and harder,” she says. “But it’s also fun; spellers crack jokes during breaks.”
She says one of the strangest parts was how silent everything becomes when it’s your turn.
“It’s just me and the word,” she says.
To stay calm, Olive uses “box breathing,” which is inhaling for four seconds, holding for four, exhaling for four, and repeating.
“It slows me down,” she says.
That calmness stood out to her father.
“When Olive is on stage, she’s the most serene person there,” Stephen says. “She has this peaceful rhythm. That’s something bigger than spelling. That’s something she can carry into life.”
Out of an estimated 11 million students who enter the spelling bee each year, Olive tied for 10th place. Along the way, she correctly spelled difficult words like sturnine, turfen, and stereokinesis and aced vocabulary questions as well.
Her run ended in the semifinals on martynia, a flowering plant.
Back home, Olive’s classmates, teachers and friends were following her progress online. Her sixth-grade history teacher, Kathleen Norsworthy, even paused during student-led conferences, to tune into the livestream on YouTube.
When Olive returned home, she was greeted with congratulations from classmates and neighbors.
Moving Forward
Olive isn’t done with words. She’s already considering entering an adult charity spelling bee next year. And beyond that, she’s thinking big.
Olive hopes to study environmental engineering one day, with a goal of helping communities better prepare for natural disasters. Olive also plays the violin in her school orchestra and hopes to run cross country and track when she attends El Segundo High School in the fall. She’s even doing a mock bee over the summer and is planning a podcast about spelling.
For younger students hoping to follow in her footsteps, her advice is simple:
“You have to be dedicated,” Olive says. “Learn as much as you can. But also understand the logic of words.”
For Westchester, Olive O’Brien’s remarkable run is already part of local history. For her family, it’s proof that sometimes the biggest achievements begin with small moments around a dining room table, one word at a time.
By Shanee Edwards. Photos by Zsuzsi Steiner.