Caden Baune, a fourth-grader from the southwest Minnesota town of Lamberton, is already a three-sport athlete at age 9. But it’s his skill on the printed page that’s won him national recognition.

Caden is this year’s Zaner-Bloser grand national champion among fourth graders in handwriting. The Red Rock Elementary student was selected as the fourth grader with the cleanest cursive handwriting in his school.

Cursive, for the record, is a style of penmanship where letters are connected in a flowing style, as opposed to block printing. It’s still taught in many schools, though not as widely as it once was.

He proceeded to win the Central Region and ultimately the Zaner-Bloser National Handwriting Contest.

“It really proved that if you work hard, you can improve wherever you want to,” Baune said.

Believe it or not, Caden was not the only Minnesota student to win the award from Zaner-Bloser, an Ohio-based company that markets curriculum for elementary schools. In the fifth-grade category, 10-year-old Zita Miller of St. Anne’s Academy in White Bear Lake took the top prize.

Zita said she writes everything in cursive. But the stakes of the competition still felt high enough that she was a little nervous when it came time to put pen to paper. When she found out she won, she said, several emotions hit at once.

“I felt very nervous, excited and happy at the same time,” Zita said.

In her free time, Zita said, she likes to unleash her creative mind by writing stories and mysteries in a journal she keeps.

Caden said he practiced his cursive at home sparingly in the lead-up to the competition. Most of his training happened in the classroom. Even then, Caden said, he typically writes most assignments in regular print handwriting. But he signs all of his worksheets and homework in cursive.

Jodi Smith, Caden’s fourth-grade teacher, said her class learns the cursive alphabet, and each student learns to write their own name in cursive.

“Part of the goal is to help the students develop a signature,” Smith said

The Zaner-Bloser competition requires students to write “the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog” in cursive — a sentence that uses every letter in the English language and is regularly administered in handwriting and style tests. Caden said he got two tries, then asked to choose the one he liked best as his official submission.

“When I found out that I (won), I was very happy,” Caden said. “My mom and dad were very proud.”

His mother, Brittni Baune, said Caden’s tenacity carries him in his endeavors — whether that means competing in basketball, soccer or baseball, or with his twin sister, Keeley at home.

“If there is anything that has an award, Caden works very, very hard at it,” Brittni Baune said.

He’s not the only renowned writer to come out of Red Rock Elementary. Eight years before Caden was named a national champion, a student named Ella Erickson won the same award in the same category.

Erickson said she was exposed to “great handwriting” through her great-grandmother, who used to write her thank-you notes and birthday cards. Erickson’s mother encouraged her to write back.

Like Caden, Erickson is also a three-sport athlete. She plays varsity volleyball, basketball and softball at Red Rock Central High. Erickson said she loves to compete, and feels proud of the honor — but added that good handwriting also means she is usually the designated writer for group projects and presentations in class.

“It’s probably not the same as it used to be but I do still take pride in having nice handwriting,” Erickson said.

The Star Tribune put Caden’s writing ability to the test against two reporters and an editor during a Friday visit to the newsroom.

The four contestants ranged in age from 9 to 51; each were tasked with writing four sentences. It had been so long since some of the journalists had written in cursive that at least one of them found they had no recollection of how to pull of the unique uppercase F and G that cursive dictates.

A staff photographer who judged the competition said Caden was easily the best penman.