Three Bay Area kids, all sponsored by the same Rotary club, make it to National Spelling Bee finals
Three Bay Area students sponsored by the same Rotary club were among 11 finalists vying for a $50,000 cash prize in the biggest spelling bee in the country — with one student making it to the final four.
Twelve-year-old Dhruv Subramanian, a 7th-grader at Windemere Ranch Middle School in San Ramon, has been watching the Scripps National Spelling Bee since he was three or four. This week, he found himself in a Washington, D.C.-area convention center as a competitor.
“It’s quite a surreal experience, especially getting into the finals like this,” Dhruv said Thursday afternoon by phone after getting in some last-minute studying on his “frequently missed words list” and doing some meditation to try to calm himself.
The ballroom in the National Harbor, Maryland, convention center where the contest started with preliminaries Tuesday is about half the size of a pro-basketball arena and decorated with honeycomb motifs. Although the giant room echoes with chatter between competitions, when the spelling bee starts, quiet descends, Dhruv said. “It sounds so calm, but in the hearts of each speller, it’s a nightmare,” he said.
After a contestant gives an answer, one of two things happens, Dhruv said. “The head judge says, ‘That’s correct,’ or the ding could happen — the speller’s out,” he said.
On Thursday night, Dhruv made it through until only he and six others remained, then he got the ding after adding two extra letters to “crenel,” a word for an opening in a battlement.
Dhruv, along with Shradha Rachamreddy, 13, a 7th-grader at BASIS Independent Silicon Valley Upper School in San Jose, and Vikrant Chintanaboina, a 14-year-old in 8th grade at Discovery Charter School’s Falcon Campus in San Jose, first won their way through three levels of Bay Area regional spelling bees. Those events started with 224 elementary- and middle-school students from 210 schools in 11 counties, and the trio came out on top among the 46 participants in the regional finals in March. On Thursday, Shradha made it to the last four contestants, then was knocked out by switching the last two letters of “orle,” part of a coat of arms.
All three — friends after many spelling bees together — were sponsored by the San Ramon Valley Rotary Club, which put on the regional finals. But the fact that the kids all made it so far is something of a coincidence — they don’t practice together, and each follows their own training regimen.
The San Ramon Valley Rotary Club officials could hardly believe all three of the students they backed made it to the top 11 of the 229 kids in the national bee, said the club’s youth services chairperson, Sudha Ponnaganti.
“It is amazing how they progressed — an amazing performance by very smart kids,” Ponnaganti said.
The club designed the regional finals to hone the skills of the contestants, enlisting judges with national-level spelling bee experience and even a pair of local Contra Costa County librarians as on-site advisors, Ponnaganti said.
National spelling bee organizers have told Ponnaganti that the Bay Area has a reputation for producing kids with exemplary spelling skills. Many of the region’s schools hold spelling bees starting early in elementary school, and many parents are highly educated, Ponnaganti said.
“It requires a lot of effort from the whole family, not just from the students themselves,” she said.
Vikrant, reached by phone just ahead of the finals Thursday, said he was excited and just “a bit” nervous. “But I know whatever happens I’ve just got to take it in stride — it’s already an accomplishment getting this far,” Vikrant said.
A competitive speller since 2nd grade, Vikrant had made it to the national bee in 2022, tying for 49th place, and in 2019, tying for 51st place.
“I try to study for a minimum of an hour a day, but I usually do five to six hours on a good day,” said Vikrant, who also likes to spend time outdoors, play video games and play with his brother. “Sometimes it can be hard to find time, so I can do only an hour. If it’s a weekend and I have nothing to do, I can easily do up to eight hours.”
Just before competing, Vikrant crams in some final practice, using his computer to present him with spoken words he has to spell. “When I get five words right, then I’ll leave the room,” he said.
Vikrant said he has found a community in the competition, kids with a shared interest and purpose. “Everybody’s not against each other but against the dictionary,” he said. Vikrant got the ding right after Dhruv, misspelling “pataca,” the money of Macao.
The National Spelling Bee started 98 years ago and now involves 11 million students each year. For more than 50 years, the competition, now the Scripps National Spelling Bee, has worked with dictionary icon Merriam-Webster, whose unabridged dictionary is the official lexicon of the bee. The competition features vocabulary questions along with spelling.
Dhruv, who plays piano and guitar, volunteers at food banks and an animal shelter and aims for a career in neuroscience, said he practices spelling and vocabulary three to four hours per day and has had a spelling-bee coach for the last year and a half. He’s been competing in spelling bees since kindergarten. Since age 4 or 5, he’s read encyclopedias out of a general interest in knowledge, he said. “I would coin myself a quick word here,” he said. “I’m an encyclopediac.”
Shradha, in clips aired during the finals, said she enjoys reading, spending time with friends, and playing badminton. Of spelling bees, she said, “There’s always the luck factor, but there is the saying that luck favors the prepared.”