On Wednesday morning, 10 local spellers were still in the competition, but at the end of the day only Jason Sorin remained. Sorin is a 13-year-old from Triangle Day School in Durham.
He was on ESPN2 on Thursday morning competing in the final round of the prestigious competition.
With 31 spellers remaining, Sorin misspelled bullace, a thorny shrub or small tree of the rose family that bears purple-black fruits. Sorin instead correctly spelled bullace's homonym bolus, a small rounded mass of a substance, especially of chewed food at the moment of swallowing.
Sorin has one more year of eligibility.
The finals of this year's spelling bee will be on ESPN starting at 8:30 p.m.