Annie-Lois Acheampong, one of three spellers from Ghana, didn't get that far in her first try. She labored successfully through her first word, “coulrophobia” — fear of clowns — and then was asked to define “edamame.” She smiled initially, but when she crossed her legs and couldn't stand still, it was clear something else was going on.
“I think I'm going to pee myself,” the 13-year-old eighth grader said. “Can I go pee? I'm very sorry.”
She scurried off the stage before she got an answer from the stunned judges, who paused the competition and conferred about how to handle the situation.
“That was a first,” head judge Mary Brooks, who's been involved with the bee for 50 years, said later.
The judges ultimately decided to let Annie-Lois return after the day's last scheduled speller. She got her substitute vocabulary word right but faltered on the spelling of “apery” to conclude the day's action. Although Annie-Lois could have been eliminated for exceeding the 30-second time limit for the earlier vocabulary question, Brooks said the speller's clock was paused because she was experiencing a legitimate emergency.
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