Spelling has always come naturally to Natasha Decker.

It’s not just talent but hard work that took her within a hair’s breadth of reaching the Scripps National Spelling Bee — a prestigious televised event featuring the best spellers in the country.

The Oak Harbor Middle School eighth grader placed third at the regional bee last weekend at Skagit Valley College in Mount Vernon.

The event featured spellers from schools from Skagit, San Juan, Island and north Snohomish counties.

Charity Jordan, a sixth grader at La Conner Middle School, won and Grace Cole, an eighth grader at LaVenture Middle School in Mount Vernon, was second.

Decker, 13, was the highest placing student from Oak Harbor. She is the daughter of Wenbo and Fabyan Decker.

“I’m sad I didn’t win, but we had some strong spellers,” Decker said.

Competing at even the regional level of this competition is no joke. The national bee is the Olympics of spelling, and contestants train like athletes.

Decker spent one to two hours every day for months preparing. She kept a notebook in which she wrote words five times each to help memorize them. Then her dad would quiz her.

Many of the words are so obscure most adults wouldn’t know what they mean much less how to spell them. A few examples: cacophony, philhellenism and hemerocallis.

“It’s very competitive,” said Alice Mikos, the librarian teacher at Oak Harbor Middle School. She organizes the spelling competition at the school.

It starts early in the school year with classroom spelling bees. Then the winners compete in a school bee for a shot at regionals.

In the past, Oak Harbor Middle School has sent two regional winners to the national bee.

“We were hoping she’d be our third,” Mikos said.

The librarian described Decker as a “hardworking, capable and gifted student” who puts 100 percent into everything she does. Decker also is student body vice president and a top student who loves math as much as literature.

The regional event was a stomach churning event for Decker, who wasn’t used to spelling in front of a large audience.

“I just put on a calm and collected look,” she said. “But inside I wasn’t.”

After a few rounds, she felt comfortable approaching the microphone and asking the judges for the origin of words — one of the clues she uses to figure out how to spell an unfamiliar word.

She lasted 28 rounds.

The word that tripped her up was “tanha,” which means an intense desire for life.

This was her last shot at attending nationals — students can only compete through the eighth grade.

She views the experience as a good one that allowed her to see how hard she’ll have to work to reach her future dreams. She would like to attend Columbia University in New York and perhaps become a lawyer or journalist.

The eighth grader said she believes that anything is possible if she puts the work in.

Her favorite quote: “I do not dream for success, I work for it.”