HARBOR, Md. — They are the best young spellers in the country. 234 students who minded their P’s and Q’s, and the 24 other letters, to qualify for the 94th Scripps National Spelling Bee taking place this week in National Harbor, Maryland.
“The ability to share ideas, to share words, to share meanings really strikes at the heart of communication and being able to communicate ideas,” said executive director J. Michael Durnil about the nearly 100 year tradition.
“A lot of people don’t know that we start out with the school level bees and classroom level bees,” said Durnil. “Usually 11 million school children participate. We have over 20,000 schools across the U.S. that begin this program.”
This year’s competitors range in age from 7 to 15 and persevere through several rounds to make the finals. Each of the spellers on the stage is already a regional champion and the amount of participants in each state is determined by the number of sponsors for regional bees.
Tara Rakesh, a 7th grade student at Ballyshannon Middle School in Union, Kentucky, was the only Kentuckian to reach the national competition this year.
Besides spelling, Tara is involved in various extracurricular activities, including math club, academic team, art and archery. She has been playing piano since the age of 5 and composes music. She also created a nonprofit organization with her sister called “The Giving Tree,” which helps underprivileged kids.
Even with that busy schedule, Tara said she found time to study every single day leading up to the spelling bee.
“I try to learn the vocabulary as well as the information behind the words so the part of speech, origin, and sometimes I try to put it in to sentences to try and learn the word better,” Tara said.
There are 4,000 words on the list called the Words of the Champions to help students prepare, but during the national competition, the words can come from anywhere in the dictionary. Rakesh said the ones that are unique are her favorites.
“I think my favorite word is ‘googol’ but it’s spelled ‘googol,’ instead of like the search engine, and this ‘googol’ means ten to the hundredth power—so, it’s one followed by 100 zeros,” said Tara.
The 13-year-old speller is one of 45 national qualifiers who have competed at the national level before. In 2021, she tied for 31st, but the first few rounds were virtual because of the pandemic, so standing on the stage was still a first.
“I had the moment where I was like ‘Oh my gosh,’ I get to actually spell on this stage and then I had to focus and get ready to spell my words,” Tara said.
This year, Tara made it through two rounds, correctly spelling gyascutus and defining expostulate, before hearing the dreaded elimination bell on the word omissible.
Tara has one more year of eligibility left and says she’ll start prepping again soon to make it back to the national stage. A passion for words runs in the family. Her sister Tanvi Rakesh competed at the National Spelling Bee in 2017 and 2018.
The winner or winners of the National Spelling Bee will be named on Thursday, June 2. In 2019, there was an eight-way tie. The competition has since added a word meaning component and a lightning round spell-off that makes a tie less likely.