Gokul Venkatachalam, Vanya Shivashankar favorites to clinch the championship.
By Sujeet Rajan
NEW YORK: An incredible number of 25 Indian Americans figure in the 49 semi-finalists, who will vie for top honors at the 88th Scripps National Spelling Bee, which is under way at the Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center in National Harbor, Maryland.
On the first day, on Tuesday, all the 285 spellers took the preliminary tests, and 279 of them remained in contention for round two, on Wednesday. It was further whittled down to 214 after round 3 on Wednesday afternoon, which included two rounds of on-stage oral spelling.
The preliminary results were then rolled in to produce a maximum of 50 semi-finalists. Forty-nine will now again begin to compete on Thursday morning at 10.m. with the grueling day ending tomorrow night with the finals beginning at 8 p.m. It will be broadcast live on ESPN2. A champion, or as the case was last year, co-champions, will emerge around 10 p.m.
The Indian American children, tweens and teens once again are slowly building a strangle-hold on the competition. The last seven editions of the competition have seen an Indian American winner(s). This year, at least 60 Indian Americans made it to the finals.
Two of the strongest spellers and the favorites this year are Gokul Venkatachalam, 14, from St. Louis, Missouri, who finished third last year, behind joint champions Sriram Hathwar and Ansun Sujoe; and Vanya Shivashankar, 13, from Olathe, Kansas, who has already bagged the $100,000 ‘Child Genius’ award this year, on Lifetime channel. It is Shivashankar’s fourth time in the Scripps nationals.
The 49 spellers in the semi-finals are (number of the speller in the competition followed by name):
1 – Victor Sutton
5 – Marcus Behling
9 – Eesha Sohail
12 – Jillian Fusi
13 – Cooper Komatsu
15 – Jenna-May Ingal
16 – Snehaa Ganesh Kumar
29 – Sylvie Lamontagne
35 – Vaishnavi Suren
39 – Siyona Mishra
45 – Monisha Mahadevan
62 – Aniket Nuthalapati
76 – Cy Orentlicher
87 – Sara-Beth McPherson
90 – Vanya Shivashankar
92 – Paul Keaton
112 – Christy Jestin
117 – Lily Mears
122 – Nathaniel Britton
128 – Maxwell Meyer
130 – Christine Farnberg
132 – Dev Jaiswal
136 – River Blount
140 – Gokul Venkatachalam
144 – Arushi Kalpande
153 – Jairam Hathwar
158 – Sai Vishudhi Chandrasekhar
159 – Srinath Mahankali
164 – Dylan O’Connor
167 – Akshra Paimagam
173 – Rohan Sachdev
181 – Owen Kovalik
183 – Lipika Narisetti
185 – Manu Nair
186 – Abhilash Yarlagadda
198 – Melina Gabele
200 – Cole Shafer-Ray
207 – William Yaeger
234 – Smrithi Upadhyayula
236 – Michelle Yakubek
237 – Shobha Dasari
238 – Siddharth Krishnakumar
246 – Muriel Cotman
255 – Samuel Pereles
259 – Shiv Lamba
261 – Ankita Vadiala
264 – Tejas Muthusamy
282 – Arjun Jagjivan.
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