When Lawrence’s Ethan Perrins had his two turns at the microphone at the Scripps National Spelling Bee, he nailed both words. Nevertheless, he was eliminated from the competition Wednesday.

Ethan Perrins, a Southwest Middle School student, won the Douglas County Spelling Bee in February and is competing at the national bee in Washington, D.C.

To qualify as a semifinalist, spellers must accumulate at least 28 points from a closed-door preliminary computer exam and spell two words correctly on stage. The bee recognized 46 semifinalists out of 281 competitors after the preliminary rounds wrapped on Wednesday and Perrins was off the list.

The two words he spelled correctly on stage weren’t exactly cakewalks, either: “pfeffernuss” and “frittata.”

There is one Kansan still alive in the competition, Vanya Shivashankar, a seventh-grader from Olathe.

Perrins is an eighth-grader at Southwest Middle School. He won both the Douglas County Spelling Bee and the Topeka Capital-Journal’s Regional Spelling Bee. It was his first appearance at the national competition.