Glenn Strickler didn’t smile much throughout the Flathead County Spelling Bee on Thursday.

Whenever his turn came, the Whitefish Middle School eighth-grader strode assuredly to the microphone, repeated the word he was given and carefully but confidently spelled it.

Strickler’s composure carried him through 14 rounds and cracked only when he broke into a grin after correctly spelling the championship word, “diesel.”

Strickler seemed unflappable even when the competitors, who had numbered 29 when the competition began, were winnowed to two.

Strickler and Megan Pancoast, a seventh-grader from Swan River School, battled one-on-one for six rounds until Pancoast faltered.

“Mole,” the spicy chili and chocolate sauce, stumped her.

According to the spelling bee’s official guide, the word should rhyme with “holy” and has no alternate pronunciations. After Pancoast carefully sounded out m-u-l-i, the judges rang the dreaded bell that indicates a misspelling and she sat down.

Strickler stood and spelled “contiguous” with the same quiet assurance he had displayed throughout the bee. When he rattled off “diesel,” the crowd burst into applause and Strickler beamed.

“It feels really good,” he said after the competition. “There were only a couple other words I would have probably had a hard time spelling.”

Despite his apparent confidence, Strickler admitted he was a little nervous when the bee began. There is more pressure on spellers during the early rounds, he explained; no one wants to be eliminated early.

Nearly half the spellers, made up of fifth- through eighth-grade students who had won bees at most of the county’s elementary and middle schools, were eliminated during the first round.

“Indelible,” “quarantine” and “rutabaga” proved tricky to sound out. “Threshold,” “sonata” and “dungaree” eliminated spellers in subsequent rounds.

Just seven spellers remained by round six, and after words such as “imperative” and “gazpacho,” four were left for round eight.

Marley Sande, a sixth-grader at Bigfork Middle School, stumbled over “obsequious,” and Evergreen Junior High eighth-grader Daniel Wigle missed “semantics,” leaving Strickler and Pancoast to vie for the first two places.

After Strickler won, Sande and Wigle competed for third and fourth place; the top three spellers in the county will compete at the Treasure State Spelling Bee March 27 in Bozeman.

Both misspelled their first words; Sande missed “amarillo” and Wigle left off the silent “e” in “Impasse.” Two rounds later, Wigle missed “giraffe,” allowing Sande to take third place with “hydraulic.”

Strickler said he will “have to study a bit more” before he’s ready for statewide competition in Bozeman. He credits his parents with teaching him how to spell, mostly by reading with him, when he was younger.

Reporter Kristi Albertson may be reached at 758-4438 or by e-mail at kalbertson@dailyinterlake.com.