CHAPEL HILL, N.C. ? Kendall Harkey, 11, is a world champion. Her feat? Mastering the gee haw whimmy diddle.

Kendall discovered the Appalachian toy, made from two rhododendron sticks, three years ago when she accompanied her mother and the Apple Chill Cloggers to the annual heritage weekend at the Folk Art Center in Asheville, N.C.

The center has held the competition since it opened 27 years ago. As far as the center’s educational director Janet Wiseman knows, the competition is the only one of its kind.

The folk toy can be traced to the turn of the century, said Peter Koch, education associate at the Western Carolina University Mountain Heritage Center. It’s mentioned in interviews high school students conducted with their Appalachian grandparents in the 1970s in a series of books called the “Firefox” series.

At her wooded home in Chapel Hill, N.C., Kendall held two slender, bent rhododendron sticks. She gently pushed the chiseled wooden propeller on the end of the longer stick with her finger. That’s the whirligig. By rubbing the shorter stick along the notches on the longer stick, Kendall made it spin.

That’s the easy part, she said.

The trick is to get the whirligig to turn clockwise and counterclockwise at her will.

“It takes a lot of practice to get it down,” Kendall said.

At first, she rubbed the sticks together so quickly it was hard to tell she had done anything different to make the whirligig turn right or left. The sticks make a loud grating sound. Sometimes it gets on her mom’s nerves, Kendall said.

Slowing down, Kendall demonstrated how she rubs her index finger on the far side of the longer stick to gee to the right, and her thumb on the near side of it to make it haw to the left.

The terms gee and haw traditionally are commands given to a donkey to make it turn right and left, explained Kendall’s mother, Chris Harkey.

The first year Kendall entered, she picked up a whimmy diddle and practiced about 30 minutes before the competition. To her surprise, she made it to the final round.

Last year, she made it only to the second round because she wasn’t able to do it left-handed.

But this year, Kendall not only showed that she could make the whirligig gee and haw in 12 seconds, then eight seconds, then four, she did it left-handed and behind her back.

Still, she didn’t expect to win. Kendall had strong competition from a boy named Sam who played the whimmy diddle with his teeth. But that wasn’t enough for him to win the top title.

Kendall made it gee and haw 19 times in 12 seconds for the final round.

That made her the world gee haw whimmy diddle champion in the 12-and-under category.

Kendall took home a poster signed by the judges, a T-shirt, a good-size trophy, and a Moon Pie.