Dev Jaiswal scored the highest points going into the finals.
By Sujeet Rajan
WASHINGTON, DC: ‘Child Genius’ Vanya Shivashankar and last year’s 3rd placed Gokul Venkatachalam led a total of seven Indian Americans out of 10 finalists in the 88th edition of the Scripps National Spelling Bee championship.
The 10 finalists, who will vie for the championship starting at 8 p.m. tonight – and wwhich will be broadcast live on ESPN2 – were culled from 49 semi-finalists, at the annual meet which is being held at the Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center in National Harbor, Maryland.
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Two of the strongest spellers and the favorites this year, 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, will battle it out tonight. It is Shivashankar’s fifth time in the Scripps nationals, and will be her final attempt.
Vanya will also try to equal the accomplishment of her sister, Kavya Shivashankar, who won the championship in 2009.
This year, the organizers ranked the spellers based on their performance on two spelling and vocabulary tests, leading to the finals. Dev Jaiswal, 13, of Louisville, Mississippi, is the top-ranked speller, and maintained that spot going into the final, with an incredible score of 69 points, out of a possible 72.
The top 12 spellers who didn’t miss a word in the semi-finals would have automatically qualified for the finals. Shobha Dasari, 14, of Texas, came close to that but stumbled on the last and final word, to be ousted.
Earlier today, the semi-finalists featured 25 Indian Americans, out of a total of 49 contestants. On the first day of the championship, on Tuesday, the 285 spellers who made the cut-off from state contests international contests, took the preliminary tests, following which 279 competed for round two. It was further whittled down to 214 after round 3 on Wednesday afternoon, which included two rounds of on-stage oral spelling.
The last seven editions of the competition have seen Indian American winner(s). This year, at least 60 Indian Americans made it to the finals.
The 10 finalists (in order of contest number, name and the cumulative points earned going into the finals) are:
16 – Snehaa Ganesh Kumar (61)
29 – Sylvie Lamontagne (61)
39 – Siyona Mishra (63)
90 – Vanya Shivashankar (64)
92 – Paul Keaton (63)
132 – Dev Jaiswal (69)
140 – Gokul Venkatachalam (63)
200 – Cole Shafer-Ray (66)
238 – Siddharth Krishnakumar (65).