By OSWALD T. BROWN
WASHINGTON, D.C., May 14, 2019 — When 565 participants begin their quest to become this year’s Scripps National Spelling Bee champion later this month at the Gaylord Resort and Convention Center in Oxon Hill, Maryland, near Washington, D.C., among them will be three exceptionally bright young Bahamian students.
Scripps National Spelling Bee has published photographs and brief bios of this year’s contestants on its website, with the following information on the Bahamians who are in the competition:
KEVIN WILLIAMS, Speller No. 87
An 11-year-old, fifth-grade student at Yellow Elder Primary School, he is sponsored by Yellow Elder Primary School
“Kevin is an avid reader who loves to read The Hardy Boys series, and he also enjoys going fishing with his dad.”
ARJUN SHETTY, Speller No. 540
A 13-year-old, eighth-grade student at Queen’s College, he is sponsored by Queen’s College
“Arjun is a passionate golfer who once got to follow Tiger Woods while he played in the Hero World Challenge golf tournament.”
ROY SELIGMAN, Speller No. 554
A 10-year-old, fourth-grade student at Lyford Cay International School, he is sponsored by the Nassau Guardian.
“Roy wants to be a computer programmer when he is older, and he is keenly interested in artificial intelligence because he wants to find new ways to improve the quality of life of people living with pacemakers, like his grandmother.”
Spellers and their families are expected to arrive Sunday, May 26, for the beginning Bee Week 2019 at the Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center in National Harbor, Maryland. The competition will begin on Monday, May 27, with the Preliminaries Test. On stage spelling rounds will take place Tuesday, May 28, Wednesday, May 29, and Thursday, May 30.
At 8:30 p.m. on Thursday, the Primetime Finals will begin to determine who will be the 2019 Scripps National Spelling Bee champion.
This is the second year that spellers were able to qualify to be participants in the competition through a new invitational program called RSVBee, introduced by the Scripps National Spelling Bee to allow jurisdictions to send more than one champion speller to the Scripps Bee.
Although The Bahamas National Spelling Bee Committee (BNSBC) did not take advantage of the opportunity to do so last year, this year it did; consequently, Kevin Williams and Arjun Shetty — who finished second and third, respectively, when the BNSBC spelling championship was held on March 10 at Atlantis on Paradise Island – have joined first-place winner Roy Seligman as representatives of The Bahamas.
When RSVBee was introduced last year, the number of participants in the 2018 Scripps Spelling Bee increased substantially from the 291 spellers who participated in 2017 to 519 contestants in last year’s Scripps Bee. A total of 241 of last year’s contestants participated via RSVBee, including the overall winner Karthik Nemmani, 14, of McKinney, Texas.
Last year Jamaica, whose contestants have perennially performed well in the Scripps Bee, entered two participants in the prestigious competition — one via RSVBee — and this year, Jamaica has entered three spellers. National Champion Darian Douglas, an 11-year-old student at Glenmuir High School, who is sponsored by the Jamaica Gleaner, has been joined by RSVBee participants Ashleigh Jarrett, a 12-year-old student at Immaculate Conception High School in Kingston, and Honey Advani, an 11-year-old student at Heinz Simonitsch School in Montego Bay.
Jamaica has the distinction of being the first foreign country to win the Scripps National Spelling Bee when 12-year-old Jody-Anne Maxwell won the top prize in 1998, just one year after Jamaica began participating at the Scripps Bee in 1997, and the year that The Bahamas participated for the first time.
Dominique Higgins, a 12-year-old Jordan Prince William High student who represented The Bahamas in 1998, performed exceptionally well but did not advance to the finals.
Although most of the participants in the Scripps are from the United States, participant include students from countries such as The Bahamas, Canada, the People’s Republic of China, India, Ghana, Japan, Jamaica, Mexico, and New Zealand.
“Historically, the competition has been open to, and remains open to, the winners of sponsored regional spelling bees in the U.S. (including 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),” according to Wikipedia.
“Contest participants cannot be older than 14 as of August 31 of the year before the competition; nor can they be past the eighth grade as of February 1 of that year’s competition,” Wikipedia notes.
This year marks the 26th anniversary of ESPN as the broadcast partner for the national finals. ESPN also 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.
The 2019 Champion will receive a newly designed trophy created exclusively for the Scripps National Spelling Bee by Rookwood Pottery that will be unveiled during Bee Week.
In addition to the trophy, the champion will receive a first-place monetary prize of $50,000 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; and a trip to Hollywood for the Champion to appear on ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel Live!
The second-place finisher will receive $25,000; third place, $15,000; fourth place, $10,000; fifth place, $5,000; 6th place, $2,500; misspell in Round 7 up through 7th place, $2,000; misspell in Rounds 4 through 6, a $500 gift.
