By OSWALD T. BROWN
WASHINGTON, D.C., April 29, 2019 — As the time nears for the two participants from The Bahamas to arrive in Washington, D.C., for the upcoming Scripps National Spelling Bee that will be held at the Gaylord Resort and Convention Center near Washington, D.C. at the end of May, I thought I might be a good idea to look back at the performance of a Bahamas contestant several years ago who was one of the most popular contestants to participate in the Scripps Bee that year.
Charles Hamilton, Jr., the Anne’s student who represented The Bahamas in the Scripps Bee in 2015, has achieved almost legendary status because of his cool demeanor when he was given a word to spell and he asked a question that had the packed convention hall roaring with laughter.
Consider this headline in a newspaper the following day: GENIUS COMPETITOR ASKS FOR ‘AN EASY WORD’ AT NATIONAL SPELLING BEE
Here are the introductory paragraphs of the story that accompanied that headline in USA TODAY:
“The National Spelling Bee is full of kids who are smarter than most people — or at least better at spelling than perhaps even Microsoft Word’s spellcheck. But it’s really their strategy on Wednesday which was the most impressive:
“Speller #8 Charles Hamilton Jr: “May I have an easy word, please?”
“Unfortunately for Charles Hamilton Jr. the word gurus at the National Spelling Bee did not comply and he got a pretty difficult word. He aced it…”
Hamilton’s Scripps National Spelling Bee performance was so memorable that the following year when I attended the Scripps Bee at the Gaylord Resort, an oversized cardboard cutout of a photo of him was prominently on display outside one of the entrances of the hall where the Bee was being held.
This year The Bahamas is represented in the Scripps Bee by Roy Seligman, a 10-year-old Lyford Cay International School student who won The Bahamas National Spelling Bee championship, and Kevin Williams, an 11-year-old Yellow Elder Primary student, who is an RSVBee participant, a new invitational program introduced last year by the Scripps to allow jurisdictions to enter two champion spellers.
Although The Bahamas did not take advantage of the opportunity last year to send two contestants, many jurisdictions did, and as a result the number of participants in the 2018 Scripps Spelling Bee increased substantially from the 291 spellers who participated in 2017 to 515 contestants in last year’s Scripps Bee. Out of the 515 spellers, 241 became contestants via RSVBee, including the overall winner Karthik Nemmani, 14, of McKinney, Texas.
According to information received from the Scripps National Spelling Bee Communications Department on Monday, April 29, 2019, this year there are ,565 spellers in the national finals, up from 515 in 2018.
“This is the second year for RSVBee, an invitational program that provides an additional path for champion spellers to compete in the national finals,” Scripps National Spelling Bee noted. “By the deadline, SNSB confirmed 294 RSVBee spellers to compete in the national finals. The other 271 spellers followed the traditional sponsored path.”
This year marks the 26th anniversary of ESPN as the broadcast partner for the national finals. ESPN will provide coverage on ESPN3 during the Preliminaries (except for Group One in Round Two). The Thursday morning Finals will be on ESPN2. Fans can watch the primetime Finals at 8:30 p.m. Eastern on ESPN.
Scripps National Spelling Bee also announced that the “2019 Champion will receive a newly designed trophy created exclusively for the Scripps National Spelling Bee by Rookwood Pottery,” which will be unveiled during Bee Week.
The first-place winner will “receive $50,000 and trophy from SNSB; $2,500 cash prize and complete reference library from Merriam-Webster; reference works and three-year online membership from Encyclopædia Britannica; a trip to New York City for the Champion to appear on Live with Kelly and Ryan; a trip to Hollywood for the Champion to appear on ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel Live!”
Although I am no longer with The Bahamas Embassy, as the person who introduced the Scripps National Spelling Bee to The Bahamas in 1998 when I was Editor of the Nassau Guardian, I am looking forward to covering the performance of The Bahamas’ two contestants in Scripps Bee for my online publication BAHAMAS CHRONICLE, which was launched to keep Bahamians and nationals of other Caribbean Community (CARICOM) countries living in the diaspora up-to-date on selected news from their respective countries. We have attracted a huge following in The Bahamas and the wider Caribbean as well as across the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom.
RSV
