AMBOY – Eighth grade graduation isn’t the only life changing event happening for Parker Zimmerly this week.

Not only did he walk across the Amboy High School gym to receive his promotion from eighth grade to next year as a freshman on Friday, May 23, but now, May 27-29, he is at the Gaylord National Resort & Convention Center in National Harbor, Maryland competing in the 2025 Scripps National Spelling Bee.

“I’m excited to go and see the museums. Despite the spelling, I’m interested in what Washington D.C. has to offer because I’ve never been there before,” Zimmerly said. “The list of study words are way harder than the words that were in the regional spelling bee. I’ve been training. I began preparing for the national spelling bee two months before hand.

“There will also be 240 contestants, so the competition is going to be tough.”

Zimmerly who is traveling to Maryland and Washington D.C. with his mother Joanie Zimmerly, a Amboy Central School second grade teacher, punched his ticket to the national spelling bee by winning both the Amboy Spelling Bee and the Lee, Ogle, Whiteside Regional Spelling Bee on February 20.

“I was kind of shocked I won the regional spelling bee. It really didn’t hit me until a few hours a later that I really did win,” said Zimmerly. “It’s kind of like a weird feeling when you win because it’s a happy feeling. But you can’t express it until it’s over.

“My last word was illicitly. I did know how to spell the word because of the definition. There are two homonyms for illicitly, one with an “e” and one with an “I”. He gave the definition, and I knew I won the competition because I knew how to spell it.

“For some reason, the word sacraments, which I had to spell, was difficult. I got the s-a-c-r and then I couldn’t remember if it was an “a” or an “I”. I went with my gut, which was an “a”, and I somehow got it right.”

This year, Zimmerly won his third straight Amboy spelling bee and became the first Amboy winner of the regional spelling bee since the 1990s.

He finished fourth as a sixth grader and fifth as a seventh grader before being the champion over 32 contestants as an eighth grader.

Amboy Junior High School Principal Andrew Full couldn’t be happier for Zimmerly.

He’d been there the last three years and was just waiting for Zimmerly to have his moment.

“I think it’s awesome. He did really well as a sixth grader. Coming back as a seventh grader, I knew he had a shot. He did well again,” Full said. “After he won this year’s school spelling bee, if I had to pick a front runner out of everyone, I knew Parker had a great chance. His grandmother came up to me after the school spelling bee and said, ‘We’re winning the regional spelling bee this year. We’re winning it.’

“I had no doubt in my mind that he could. He does a great job at school. He reads well. He is well spoken. When they were introducing the regional contestants, I recognized a couple others who had been there once or twice before and knew those were Parker’s toughest opponents.

“When he made it to the last four, the one girl, who I thought could win if Parker didn’t, spelled a word wrong. I was shocked and I knew it was good for Parker. He got the word illicitly; I saw his grin and knew he had it.”

Zimmerly didn’t wake up one day and said, ‘I’m going to be a good speller’.

Actually, he became good at spelling and then found an interest in it organically through books.

“I didn’t really discover my love for spelling until the sixth grade when I won the school spelling bee. I’ve won it three years in a row now,” Zimmerly said. “After studying so much, I realized I really did like doing it. One of my goals was to win the regional spelling bee.

“Since I was 3 years old, I’ve loved reading. I remember studying spelling and recognizing words from books I read. I think my love for spelling comes from my love of reading.”

Zimmerly says a few of his favorite books are the Hunger Games series.

Although, he personally likes reading and spelling, when asked if he wanted to be an English teacher, he said, “Probably not.”