NATCHEZ — When Cathedral fourth-grader Cayden Coach made it to the district spelling bee at Oak Forest Academy last month, Coach said he was “poised” for the challenge.

As Coach’s mom, Cassie, herd the judges call out the word “poised,” Cayden said she thought it was over.

“We didn’t have time to study that far,” Coach said.

However, Coach spelled the word perfectly and surprised her and everyone else as he took second place in his division, he said.

Coach said his mom helped him study up until the day of the competition and supported him each step of the way — along with his teachers and classmates.

“It gets easier the more you study it,” he said.

Coach said there isn’t much of a secret to how he was able to spell words correctly that he hadn’t studied. He just had to understand what the word was, then perhaps he could remember reading it in books, he said.

“Sometimes it helps if I don’t understand a word to ask for a definition and then a sentence,” he said.

Coach said he loves reading and imagines himself becoming a fiction writer someday.

“I’d like to be an author,” he said. “I like writing fantasy stories. … In third-grade, my teacher made us put together a reading journal. … I wrote an entire mini-series in it — about an alien named Quarts.”

Coach’s passion for reading and writing seems to have paid off at the district bee as he made it further in the competition than he’d imagined and will advance to the state bee at Jackson in January.

“I’m just surprised I got that far,” he said.