ALL THREE BAHAMIAN SPELLERS ARE POISED TO ADVANCE IN SCRIPPS NATIONAL SPELLING BEE

Theo Neilly (center back row), Bahamas Consul General to Washington, D.C., is pictured with the three Bahamian spellers who are participating in the Scripps National Spelling Bee, their family members, coaches and Bahamas National Spelling Bee officials who accompanied them to D.C. Also pictured is Oswald T. Brown (fifth from right), President of THE BROWN AGENCY, which publishes BAHAMAS CHRONICLE. Mr. Brown was responsible for introducing the Scripps Bee to The Bahamas when he was Editor of The Nassau Guardian in 1998. (Photo by Elisabeth Ann Brown)

By OSWALD T. BROWN

WASHINGTON, D.C., May28, 2019 — Mr. Theo Neilly, Bahamas Consul General to Washington, D.C., was in the audience when Roy Seligman and Arjun Shetty, two of the three Bahamians spellers who are participating in the 2019 Scripps National Spelling Bee, correctly spelt their first on-stage words on Tuesday, May 28, during the afternoon session of the Second Round of the Scripps Bee being held at the Gaylord Resort and Convention Center at National Harbour in Oxon Hill, Maryland, near Washington, D.C.

Roy Seligman, Bahamas National Spelling Bee Champion, seen spelling during the Second Round of the Scripps National Spelling Bee at the Gaylord Resort and Convention Center at National Harbour in Oxon Hill, Maryland, Tuesday afternoon. (Photo by Elisabeth Ann Brown)

Earlier during the morning session, Kevin Williams, the third Bahamian speller participating in the Scripps Bee, also spelt his first word, “acidulous,” correctly and along with the other members of the first group of spellers who participated in the initial session of the Second Round on Tuesday morning, Kevin participated in the first segment of the Third Round late Tuesday afternoon and correctly spelt his second on-stage word, “vociferate.”

Seligman and Shetty will both participate in their Third Round session on Wednesday, when they will be given their second on-stage words to spell, and if both spell their words correctly, they will join Williams in waiting to see if they will advance to the Fourth Round.

Whether any or all three of them continue their quest to become the 2019 Scripps National Spelling Bee Champion depends of how well they did in the written Preliminaries Test on Monday. The top scorers on the Preliminaries Test who spelled correctly in Rounds Two and Three will be invited to the stage for the announcement of the finalists. No more than 50 spellers will advance to the finals.

This is the first year that The Bahamas has entered three participants in the Scripps Spelling Bee. Seligman, a 10-year-old fourth-grade student at Lyford Cay International School, won the right to represent The Bahamas in the prestigious competition when won the Bahamas National Spelling Bee (BSCB) championship finals held on Sunday, March 10, at Atlantis on Paradise Island.

Williams, an 11-year-old fifth-grade student at Yellow Elder Primary, and Shetty, a 13-year-old eighth-grader at Queen’s College, finished second and third, respectively, in the BNS championship finals and qualified as contestants in the Scripps Bee through the RSVBee process, a new invitational program introduced in 2017 by Scripps to allow jurisdictions to enter more than one champion speller.