NASSAU, Bahamas – To their credit, organizers of the 22nd annual Bahamas National Spelling Bee have structured this year’s competition using a similar format as the Scripps National Spelling Bee held annually near Washington, D.C., in which contestants participate in preliminary rounds that include written and vocabulary tests.
The 24 spelling finalists from districts throughout The Bahamas participated in preliminary Rounds 1, 2 and 3 this morning, Friday, March 8, in the Prince of Wales Ballroom of Atlantis at Paradise Island, and according to the program, Rounds 1 and 2 were designated for “Written Spelling and Vocabulary A&B” and Round 3 was for “Oral Vocabulary”.
Presumably, performances by contestants in the preliminary rounds will be factored into their onstage performance on Sunday, March 10, when the contestants will compete on stage for The Bahamas National Spelling Bee Championship beginning at 3:00 p.m. in Crown Ballroom of Atlantis on Paradise Island.
The winner will represent The Bahamas in the 92nd annual Scripps National Spelling Bee at the Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center in National Harbor, Maryland, near Washington, .D.C., from May 27 – 30.
This year, however, rather than send one contestant, The Bahamas can be represented by two spellers as a result of a new invitational program called RSVBee introduced last year by the Scripps National Spelling Bee to allow jurisdictions to send two champion spellers to the prestigious spelling competition.
Although The Bahamas did not take advantage of the opportunity last year, many jurisdictions did, and as a result the number of participants in the 2018 Spelling Bee increased substantially from the 291 spellers who participated in 2017 to 519 contestants in last year’s Scripps Bee. Out of the 519 spellers, 241 became contestants via RSVBee, including the overall winner Karthik Nemmani, 14, of McKinney, Texas.
Every year since the Scripps National Spelling Bee was introduced to The Bahamas in 1998 by Oswald T. Brown when he was Editor of the Nassau Guardian, with strong support from the then Minister of State for Education Dion Foulkes, the Ministry of Education has organized competitions at all levels of its school system — starting with in-school competitions and subsequently regional competitions — to select finalists to compete in The Bahamas National Spelling Bee.
Last year, Bahamas champion Johnathan Randall, the Eleuthera District champion, performed extremely well in the 91st annual Scripps Bee, but did not score well enough in the written test to advance beyond the preliminary rounds to the championship rounds.
Participants in the Scripps Bee include spelling champions from across the United States, The Bahamas, Canada, the People’s Republic of China, Ghana, Japan, Jamaica, Mexico, and New Zealand. The prestigious educational competition is also open to spelling champions from U.S. territories such as Guam, American Samoa, the Navajo Nation, and the U.S. Virgin Islands, along with overseas military bases in Germany and South Korea.
