As spelling bees go, it was a duel for the ages.

Heavily favored seventh-grader Parker Ramey won his third consecutive Hall County schools spelling bee Thursday, but not without a fierce challenge mounted by sixth-grade opponent Matthew Antoci.

The two final spellers went head-to-head for a Hall County record 20 rounds and nearly 20 minutes before Antoci misspelled “cynicism” and Ramey correctly spelled “euphoric.”

“Euphoric — and that’s how I feel right now,” Ramey said to applause.

Thursday’s spelling bee had the most total rounds, 29, and the longest two-student showdown in the history of the competition, school officials said.

“I’ve never seen anything like it before,” West Hall Middle School Principal Sarah Justus said. “I was hoping we wouldn’t run out of words in our spelling book.”

Antoci, 11, made the judges work, requesting the language of origin for each of his 29 words.

Afterward he explained his strategy, saying that the different languages from which words originated provided hints as to when letters like “y” or “c” might be more common.

Antoci, a student at C.W. Davis Middle School, had some doozies thrown at him, including “streusel,” “sayonara,” “chinchilla” and “tobogganer.”

“That was a battle,” said Antoci’s father, Christopher Antoci. “He was the underdog coming in, and he gave him a good run for his money.”

Ramey, a 12-year-old student at South Hall Middle’s DaVinci Academy, agreed.

“He really put me through my paces,” Ramey said.

Some of Ramey’s more challenging words included “sukiyaki,” “femininity” and “chandelier.” He spelled most with little or no hesitation and later said he was never really stumped during the competition.

The two middle school students are the top spellers out of Thursday’s 41 contestants and the Hall County school system’s 26,000 students.

They both go on to the District 9 competition Feb. 27. If either wins, he would advance to the state competition.

In last year’s state spelling bee, Ramey came in seventh and was the top male speller.

“Now I’m going to study even more,” he said.

Said Antoci, “I just want to win.”