The toughest preliminary in competition’s history.
By Deepak Chitnis
WASHINGTON, DC: Two middle schoolers from Missouri, 13 year-old Kush Sharma and 11 year-old Sophia Hoffman, found themselves locked in an unbreakable tie at a spelling bee competition at the Kansas City Public Library on Sunday.
The two were the final contestants standing from a pool that originally consisted of 25, and are set to duel on March 8 in a sudden death elimination round which will determine the competition’s winner. The victor of that round will go on to compete in the Scripps National Spelling Bee here in Washington, DC, the most renowned spelling competition in the world.
Sharma and his opponent, Hoffman – the former is a seventh grader at Frontier School of Innovation in Kansas City, while the latter is a fifth grader at Highland Park Elementary School in the Kansas City suburb of Lee’s Summit – were so good that the judges actually ran out of words to give them, requiring the tiebreaker round next week. The two kids battled it out for an astounding 66 rounds before the judges were forced to declare a delay.
And the words given to the children in the contest are nothing to laugh at. For example, Hoffman was at point asked to spell “schadenfreude” – a word that describes the good feeling one gets at someone else’s misfortune.
The Scripps National Spelling Bee has been dominated by Indian Americans for the past several years. In fact, the last six competitions in a row were all won by desis – you have to go all the way back to 2007, when 13 year-old California native Evan O’Dorney won, for the last time a non-Indian won the Scripps National Spelling Bee.
The winners for the past six years were Arvind Mahankali (2013, New York), Snigdha Nandipati (2012, California), Sukanya Roy (2011, Pennsylvania), Anamika Veeramani (2010, Ohio), Kavya Ravishankar (2009, Kansas), and Sameer Mishra (2008, Indiana).
To contact the author, email to deepakchitnis@americanbazaaronline.com