COEUR d'ALENE - Big dreams, big goals and big responsibilities lie ahead for Coeur d'Alene Charter Academy seventh-grader Kiana Lacroix.

She would love to someday travel abroad, become a young author and speed-skate in the Olympics.

But for now, the 13-year-old has spelled her way into the Scripps National Spelling Bee in Washington, D.C., where she will compete against 281 other young stellar spellers. She leaves early Saturday morning for Bee Week, which begins with preliminary testing May 27 and ends with championship finals aired live on ESPN the evening of May 29.

"I'm excited. I'm kind of stressed," Kiana said Thursday evening. "I'm sure I'll get more anxious and excited when the spelling bee actually comes, but I think I've gotten all that out in the last month or so."

Kiana won the 11th annual North Idaho Regional Spelling Bee at North Idaho College on March 22 with the word "disputatious." It was a long competition with more than 30 rounds and countless obscure words, but none that could quite stump her.

Although, as she has studied her national spelling words, she has found German to be a challenging language.

"I have noticed that when I study German words, it messes me up," she said. "Especially with all the phlegm and everything. There's like 's-c-h's everywhere."

Although the Scripps Bee is a national competition, a few of the spellers are from countries such as Ghana, Guam, China and Canada. Kiana said she realizes this may step up the competition.

"Americans have sports idols, or they want to be a singer," she said. "People from China and India, basically they grow up and they're taught that it's most important to get a good education and go to a good school, and get all these good things out of life. And I guess American kids just aren't taught that. I mean, some are."

On top of her regular academics and piano lessons, Kiana spends at least two hours spelling on school days and more time on the weekends. For the national competition, she also must master vocabulary.

"Last night, I finished the last lesson on spellingbee.com," she said, relieved.

"The first round you're on your own. Anything goes from Merriam-Webster Dictionary," said her mom, Theresa DeWit. "She's comfortable with that, but you also have to know definitions, so that's 1,200 definitions of those crazy words that she has to spell."

The champion of the bee wins a $30,000 cash prize and the Scripps National Spelling Bee engraved trophy. The thought of getting that far hadn't really crossed Kiana's mind, although once discussed, she started pondering.

"If I had $30,000 what would I spend it on?" she said. "I would probably start off with buying my school an air conditioning system. It's horrible in there. But then, I don't know, what can you buy with $30,000?"

Kiana is one of two spellers representing Idaho. Keep track of Coeur d'Alene's stellar speller at www.spellingbee.com and check The Press for updates.