A seventh-grader at Galesburg learns a lot in a year: new hallways, new rhythms, who to sit with at lunch, where the good light falls in the library. For Aizlee Burkhardt, those lessons come with an extra lift. As a flyer in cheer, she rises above her teammates’ heads and lets gravity tug while hands she trusts return her safely to earth. “It’s kind of scary, but it’s fun,” she says, recalling the moment her body hovers nearly ten feet high before the cradle brings her back.

Flying, she’s discovered, isn’t a solo act. It’s choreography and conversation—arms in a perfect “T,” knees locked, voices threading the stunt together: now, closer, got you. “You have to be, like, close to those people and you have to communicate while you’re in the air,” Aizlee explains. “All of us are in the right position… being there for one another.”

That sense of communication and trust stretches far beyond the mat. Aizlee is a self-described empath (“me and my mom are certified empaths,” she says with a grin), tuned into the small shifts in other people’s weather: a teacher’s quiet expectations, the cafeteria mood on a friend’s hard day. “When someone truly understands you,” she says, “it gives you the okay… you’re good. And life’s good. Life’s beautiful.”

It’s no surprise, then, that Aizlee gravitated toward the Spelling Bee when Galesburg brought it back in 2024. She didn’t just participate; she threw herself into the word lists with the same precision she brings to a stunt sequence. She studied the book of words from Scripps, tapped into online resources, and even gathered with younger students to help them practice. For her, words were another kind of lift, a way of being both held and holding others.

The results spoke loudly. Aizlee won the District Spelling Bee, representing Lombard Middle School at the Regional Bee, where she earned second place. In an auditorium filled with the buzz of nerves and the click of spelling rhythms, she held her ground. “It was a lot of pressure,” she admits, “but I wanted to keep trying, keep seeing how far I could go.” That instinct—to climb, to risk, to trust herself—mirrors the same courage she shows when stepping to the edge of her teammates’ hands, knees locked, ready to fly.

Details are her native language. A reader first, Aizlee is midway through The Summer I Turned Pretty trilogy, weighing the differences between page and screen. Books win; they always do. “There’s a lot more detail in the books… you get to stop at certain moments and… know what the character is thinking,” she says. That attention to detail carries into her writing, where she notices typos, rhythm, and the stitch that’s just slightly out of place. Inspiration often ambushes her in the middle of the night, pulling her from sleep to jot notes at her desk or on her iPad before the words slip away.