SALEM, W.Va. — Daniel Staddon, a homeschooler from Harrison County, has never competed in a spelling bee. He’s never competed in a geography bee. But earlier this month he became the first-ever winner of the National Bible Bee - taking home a sizable trophy and $100,000.

Daniel discovered the bee while looking through a catalog last winter with his mother, Donna. They spotted a Bible study guide called “Balancing the Sword,” and noticed a blurb naming it the official study guide of the 2009 National Bible Bee. The paragraph also mentioned the bee’s $100,000 grand prize.

“I thought ‘Whoa,’” Donna said.

They ordered the study guide, and Daniel started to work. Because he turned 18 in 2009, it would be his only chance to compete.

The National Bible Bee had been in the works since 2005, after the death of 23-year-old Shelby Kennedy, a Texas woman who’d done extensive mission work in Haiti and Mexico. At Kennedy’s memorial service, speakers reveled her passion for scripture memorization, inspiring a member of the congregation to set up an endowment in her name.

“He had this idea, this vision that came to him that he wanted to launch a national Bible bee in her name,” said Mark Rasche, executive director of bee.

Rasche says children were already competing in spelling bees and geography bees, so “how much better to have the word of God memorized.”

In 2008, bee organizers put a plan together to launch. By spring of this year, the inaugural National Bible Bee was up and running with preliminary local bees scattered throughout the country.

Much like the Scripps National Spelling Bee, the National Bible Bee and its local competitions have written and oral segments. The written portion tests competitors’ Bible trivia expertise. During the oral portion, bee participants have to recite passages from the Bible verbatim.

Daniel says he preferred the written test, because he could concentrate better.

“With the oral rounds, you had to deal with nervousness and standing in front of a crowd,” he said.

But that’s not to say the written portion was easy. Contestants had just one hour to answer questions from six books of the Bible - Genesis, 1 Samuel, 2 Samuel, Matthew, Acts and Romans.

“I find it was kind of hard to read what they asked - it was so fast,” Daniel said. “You just had to put your best answers and move on.”

Donna says she didn’t doubt her son’s ability to compete.

“I knew that he would be able to not be distracted by other things. If this is what he wanted to do it would be priority for him,” she said.

And the Staddons have a pretty good background in the subject matter. Donna said her family reads the Bible together every morning, and goes through the book of Proverbs every month.

“That’s wisdom, that’s how you teach your children wisdom,” she said.

Before the Bible Bee, Daniel says he’d read the Bible through three or four times. But in the last year, he’s gone from “In the beginning” to “Amen” twice.

Daniel says he memorized the three-chapter-long “Sermon on the Mount” when he was about 10 years old, and it took him a year. But even that didn’t prepare him for the rigor of Bible Bee preparation.

“We’ve all done a little bit of memory, but nothing like this,” Daniel said.

Bee organizers told contestants which scriptures they’d be asked to recite in April. Daniel ordered a pack of cards with the passages on them and started studying. He developed study strategies to get through the more daunting passages. Daniel found a Web site that recommended highlighting verses so the mind would associate words with colors. It worked.

“When they would say James 3, I’d think purple,” Daniel said.

He also drew pictures on the scripture cards to jar his memory and underlined tricky phrases where he might get confused.

Another Web site suggested guessing at passages. Daniel said he used to learn scripture phrase-by-phrase, building until he had it all down. But now, when he comes to the end of a phrase he doesn’t know, he just guesses about what will come next.

“After a while you can finish out whole lines,” Daniel said.

Competitors were allowed to memorize passages from any of five Bible translations - the New International Version, the King James Version, the New King James, the English Standard Version and the New American Standard Bible.

Rasche says most competitors favored the New International translation, because it had the most “contemporary language,” though the 400-year-old King James Version was also quite popular.

Daniel recited from the King James Bible, and says his reason for choosing the antiquated translation was simple.

“I’ve always grown up using the King James Version,” he said.

He says competitors’ choice of translation didn’t really matter (”It is all the word of God”), Daniel says using another version would have confused him, since he didn’t know the language as well.

On Sept. 12, Daniel competed in Bridgeport’s Bible Bee. He was the only competitor in his age class, but was still given the written test and all the oral recitation rounds. His results were sent to Bible Bee headquarters, where organizers compared his scores to those of bee contestants nationwide.

“We took the top 300 contestants from three age groups and invited them to nationals,” Rasche said. “They were competing against their peers nationally.”

After the local competition, Daniel says he didn’t think he made the cut. The family expected to hear something from the National Bible Bee within a couple days, but a week passed and there wasn’t any news.

Figuring his run was over, Daniel stopped studying so intensely and resumed his normal Bible study. Until he checked the Bible Bee’s Web site and found his name on a list of national competitors.

“I saw it first, and I couldn’t believe it,” Daniel said.

He let the rest of his family take a look, and when they saw his name too, Daniel says he knew it was for real.

“We all exploded,” he said.

Reality set in quickly, though. Daniel said he immediately thought “Wow, we have a lot of work to do.”

In the local competitions, senior-level participants only had three levels of passages to learn. The national competition added a fourth category - often whole chapters of the Bible.

“Dad said ‘Wow, this is more like seminary,’” Daniel said.

The National Bible Bee was Nov. 4 and 5 at the J.W. Marriott Hotel in Washington, D.C. That Thursday, the 100 contestants in each age class took a multiple-choice Bible knowledge test and competed in two oral recitation rounds. By the next day, the field was narrowed to just seven children in each class.

Daniel said the competition was nerve-wracking for everyone involved. On one of the early oral recitation rounds, he said he looked around at other contestants and thought, “Why are everyone’s knees shaking?” His knees were shaking too.

Things got even tenser when the senior-level competition wound up in a three-way tie. Even after a tie-breaker round, Rasche says no one faltered.

“There was nothing that could stump them,” Rasche said. “They were all three just incredibly qualified and really prepared to get to that level.”

Daniel finally clinched the title with Psalm 145, 331 words in 21 verses.

“It turned out to be the one I’d gone over the night before,” Staddon said.

But bee organizers didn’t tell anyone the results until the awards banquet.

“Well, it was nice to know that he was in the top three,” Donna said. “I knew he had a prize, whatever it was, and that was exciting.”

Daniel says he didn’t really get to enjoy his meal because presenters waited until the very end to announce the senior class winners. Eventually, though, they announced the third-place winner. It wasn’t him. Then they announced the second-place winner. That wasn’t him either. Daniel placed first - winning $100,00 and his first-ever trophy.

He’s crediting his victory to a higher power. He said there were too many “intangibles” in the competition to give himself all the praise.

“They could always ask the ones you don’t know,” Daniel said.

He also credits his success to his family, who constantly quizzed him and listened to hours and hours of scripture recitation.

“It definitely would not have been possible without their help,” he said.

And Daniel wasn’t lacking in help - the Staddons, who live in Salem, have eight children. In addition to Daniel, there’s Donald, 30, Michael, 28, Robert, 36, Esther, 23, James, 21, Jonathan, 16, and David, 13.

Now that the competition’s over, Daniel says he’s taking a break from hardcore scripture memorization but is trying to retain what he’s already learned.

“I’m trying to keep them up,” he said.

Daniel says there have been rumors about an adult division at future Bible Bees, but doesn’t think he’d want to participate.

“It was good for one year, but I think more that that would be too much,” he said.

As for the prize money, he still hasn’t figured out how to spend it.

“I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about that,” Daniel said.

He says he might use it for furthering his education, a car, or on a house when the time comes. But Daniel’s quick to point out that he didn’t compete for money.

Though he says the $100,000 sparked his interest in the bee, even a sum that large isn’t enough to make someone study as hard as he did.

“There has to be a deeper reason if you’re going to put that much effort into it,” Daniel said.

He says “hiding God’s word in your heart” is completely different than reading the same words on ink and paper.

“When you memorize something, it goes to a new level. There’s something about getting it into your heart,” he said.