The first time she won, Mika Ishii was just 10 years old, a pint-size fourth-grader at Wilson Elementary School, calmly dispatching the state’s most accomplished eighth-graders with her vast knowledge of geography.

“They looked really odd because she was so little and she was up against an eighth-grade boy from Punahou” in the final round of the 2012 Hawaii National Geographic Bee, recalled her father, Andrew Ishii.

Mika, now an eighth-grader herself at Kaimuki Middle School, will represent Hawaii for the fourth time in five years at the National Geographic Bee Championship in Washington, D.C., May 23-25.

“I like geography because learning geography helps with everything, all different subjects, and it makes the world seem closer,” said the soft- spoken 14-year-old. “The Geography Bee helps you understand the whole world and understand other cultures and people.”

Her teachers and parents say her success in the contest stems from her natural curiosity and ravenous appetite for reading. No one pasted maps over her crib or anything like that.

“I don’t think we actually own a globe,” her dad said, although Mika has collected plenty of maps and atlases through years of competition.

Seventeen of this year’s 54 competitors at the National Geographic Bee are repeat participants, but Mika is the only one taking part in the nationals for the fourth time. She took top honors in Hawaii in 2012, 2014, 2015 and again last month.

She credits her teachers and parents for helping her learn. Geography shows up in all her subjects, she said, from plate tectonics in science class to Civil War battlefields in social studies. The bee requires students to synthesize what they know.

“It’s not just memorization,” Mika said. “You have to use critical thinking to understand and quickly, within 12 or 15 seconds, figure out what the answer is from all the knowledge that you gained through studying. You have to reason out the answer.”

Mika was the youngest person to win Hawaii’s National Geographic Bee in 2012. When she moved up to Kaimuki Middle, social studies teacher Joan Hansen volunteered to lead a geography club on campus.

“She inspired a lot of kids to join Geography Club,” Hansen said. “She comes across as very shy, but she’s really not. She’s a really cool kid.”

Mika will fly to Washington with her dad and her mom, Diane Imamura, for the contest, which includes kids from grades four to eight. She will be facing off against geography whiz kids from each of the states as well as the District of Columbia, Department of Defense schools and Atlantic and Pacific territories.

“The National Geographic Bee teaches students not only about names and places, but also about the world and how it works, empowering them to become Earth’s stewards and make it a better place,” said Gary Knell, president of the National Geographic Society, a nonprofit membership organization.

National Geographic started the competition in 1989 in hopes of sparking interest among American youths in geography and the rest of the world, given their general lack of knowledge on that front.

“We’re thrilled Mika will be joining us again in Washington, D.C.,” said Farley Fitzgerald, communications manager for the bee. “Mika was one of the first fourth-graders from any state to qualify for nationals — only a few participants before her accomplished this rare feat.”

Only a couple of other students have represented their states at the National Geographic Bee four times, Fitzgerald said.

Mika, who plays violin in the Hawaii Youth Symphony Orchestra, will attend Kalani High next year. She said she was accepted to top private schools for middle and high school but decided to stick with the public schools.

“My teachers were really great at Wilson and Kaimuki Middle,” she said. “It made me want to stay longer.”

So far, the only foreign country Mika has visited is Canada, but she hopes to go farther afield in the future.

“I think it’ll be really exciting to see places that I’ve only seen in pictures or read about in books,” she said.

Her parents will have a built-in tour guide.