Peter Westbrook waits for a word Saturday during the Douglas County Spelling Bee while Ayla Nguyen smiles in the background. Westbrook, a Bishop Seabury Academy eighth-grader, won a final 31-round head-to-head contest against the second-place Nguyen to claim is second county bee championship. The two will both advance to the March 4 regional bee at Shawnee Heights High School.

The large No. 1 that Peter Westbrook was given to wear on his chest at Saturday’s Douglas County Spelling Bee proved to be prophetic.

The 14-year-old Bishop Seabury Academy eighth-grader outlasted Corpus Christi Catholic School eighth-grader Ayla Nguyen and 23 other area students to claim the title at Southwest Middle School and become a two-time champion of the bee, which is sponsored by the Lawrence Journal-World.

“I won as a sixth-grader two years ago,” he said. “I got beat at my school last year.”

Westbrook and Nguyen, who finished second in the 2016 county bee, engaged in a 31-round word-for-word battle, in which they correctly spelled such words as “pterodactyl,” “pirouette,” “serotonin,” “tumulus” and “staccato.” Westbrook claimed the first-place trophy when he correctly spelled “crustacean” after Nguyen was tripped up on “ebullient.”

Westbrook was confident at the microphone throughout the final round, rarely having to ask moderator Scott Stanford, publisher of the Journal-World, to use a word in a sentence or provide its definition or its language of origin as he gathered his thoughts. Nonetheless, Westbrook said his victory was partly the luck of the draw.

“There were some words my competitor had I didn’t know,” he said. “I did know ebullient. I had it in an earlier contest.”

With their first- and second-place finishes, Westbrook and Nguyen will advance to the regional spelling bee March 4 at Shawnee Heights High School near Topeka.

Other competitors at the bee were: Chase Reed, St. John Catholic School; Olivia Hogelin, Baldwin Intermediate Center; Zoe Cachiguango-Latta, Raintree Montessori School; Chehalis Jones, South Middle School; Chason Cummings, Kennedy Elementary; Adam Hemker, Quail Run Elementary; Ben Suber, Veritas Christian School; Max Nokes, Eudora Elementary; Karmen Michel-Cox, Broken Arrow Elementary; Gabriel Spray, Schwegler Elementary; Andrei Lefort, Deerfield Elementary; Cale Feuerborn, Eudora Middle School; Carter Northrop, Sunflower Elementary; Oliver Reed, Woodlawn Elementary; June Baggett, Hillcrest Elementary; Steven Tao, Southwest Middle School; Brady Johnson, Langston Hughes Elementary; Ike Phillips, Liberty Memorial Central Middle School; Elinor Russo, Sunset Hill Elementary; Belle Olson, Baldwin Junior High School; Madysen Stanford, Pinckney Elementary; Samuel Price, New York Elementary; and Ryan Laird, West Middle School.