The National Junior Classical League Convention is an annual gathering of thousands of the most accomplished Latin and classical humanities students in the United States — the closest thing American secondary classical education has to a national championship in the discipline. The 2025 Convention was held July 21–26 at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. Sean Seungwoo Lee and Jason Tae competed as virtual delegates, sitting the academic examinations online against the full national field.
Two students entered. Both placed first.
Academic contest first-place finishers. Miami University, Oxford, Ohio. July 21–26, 2025.
- Sean Seungwoo LeeInternational School — Korea
- Jason TaeBoarding School — United States
The NJCL academic contests for virtual delegates cover the full range of classical learning the program tests: Latin vocabulary and derivatives, mythology, Roman history, and the Heptathlon — a composite examination drawing on grammar, syntax, reading comprehension, and the breadth of the Latin literary and cultural tradition. The examinations are identical for all competitors. There is no distinction between in-person and virtual scoring. First place means first in the national field.
Emerson Latin congratulates Sean and Jason on a result that reflects well on them both.
Macte virtute.
This program’s record at the NJCL Convention has a point of reference: William Kim, who placed first in four events at the 2021 Convention — Reading Comprehension, Vocabulary, Greek Derivatives, and the Academic Heptathlon. That four-event performance set the standard. Sean Seungwoo Lee and Jason Tae have now extended it. The program has produced first-place convention finishers in multiple years, in different formats, under different conditions. One student studied at an international school in Korea; the other at a boarding school on the American East Coast. They competed separately, from different countries, and arrived at the same result.
The Heptathlon is worth noting specifically. It is the convention’s most comprehensive academic test — a single examination that draws simultaneously on grammar, syntax, vocabulary, Latin derivatives, etymology, reading comprehension, mythology, and Roman history and culture. To place first in it is to have command not of one area of classical study but of all of them at once. That Sean and Jason should place first in this field — not as members of an in-person delegation but as virtual competitors sitting the examination abroad and across an ocean — is a precise record of where their formation stands. We note it with satisfaction and look forward to the years ahead.