NASSAU, Bahamas – Roy Seligman, a 10-year-old Lyford Cay International School student, won the Bahamas National Spelling Bee (BNSB) for the second year in a row by spelling “theatricality” when the 23rd Bahamas National Spelling Bee was held in the Crown Ballroom of the Atlantis Resort on Paradise Island on Sunday, March 8, 2020.
His win came during the 17th round after more than three-and-a-half hours of competition. Gabriel Ajul, 11, a seventh-grade student at Exuma Christian Academy, took home second place, and Maria Sanchez, 11, a sixth-grader at St. Anne’s School, was third.
A total of 22 spellers were finalists in this year’s BNSB. Because of the devastation caused to Abaco by Hurricane Dorian the first week of September 2019, Abaco was not represented.
In an interview with the Nassau Guardian, one of the sponsors of the BNSB, following his victory Seligman said, “I feel very relieved … I studied very hard because I knew I had great competitors.”
Asked if he was nervous when faced with the winning word, he replied, “No, because I had seen it, so I knew it.”
Noting that he studied at least two hours per day leading up to the National Spelling Bee, Seligman added, “My mom would call the words for me. We would make lists of them and I would study the roots and origins.”
His mother, Nuala Seligman, said training for the competition was “less intense for him because he’s involved in a lot of other things”.
“[H]e knuckled down and obviously did very well,” she said, adding that this year’s competition as “more nerve-racking the second time around.”
In addition to an all-expense-paid trip to Washington, D.C. to compete in the Scripps National Spelling Bee, Seligman won $750 in spending money, a laptop, a one-year subscription to the Encyclopedia Britannica, the Samuel Louis Sugarman Award ($100 U.S. savings bond), and will attend a reception at the Bahamian Embassy in Washington, D.C.
Seligman said he plans to make his training “more intense” in preparation for the Scripps National Spelling Bee, which will be held May 24-29 at the Gaylord Resort and Convention Center in Oxon Hill, Maryland, near Washington, D.C.
Seligman’s coach, Katina Seymour, said he will focus more on vocabulary development leading up to Scripps.
Noting that she and Seligman’s mother “work together,” Seymour said, “It’s a super, super, super partnership team. So, we’re going to continue now to revise our schedule. One of the things that we’re going to heavily focus on as we get ready for Washington is vocabulary development.”
She added, “We found that that made a huge difference between those who were spelling phonetically and those who were just memorizing from lists. Vocabulary has to be a predominant feature, so that’s where we’re going to put some emphasis once we get back to school and get back to the trenches for the next competition.”
Last year, The Bahamas entered three contestants in the Scripps National Spelling Bee. In addition of Seligman, The Bahamas was also represented by Kevin Williams, an 11-year-old fifth-grade student at Yellow Elder Primary School, who finished second in last year’s BNSB, and Arjun Shetty, a 13-year-old a Queen’s College eighth grader student, who finished third last year.
Both Gabriel Ajul and Maria Sanchez will accompany Seligman to Washington, D.C., by virtue of the fact that they finished second and third, respectively, in this year’s BNSB but whether or not they will be contestants will depend on whether they can obtain financial sponsorship to meet the requirements of Scripps National Spelling Bees’s RSVBee program, introduced in 1998, creating a pathway more spellers to participate the national finals.
“We’ve known for many years that large numbers of excellent spellers have had limited access to the national finals or no pathway at all,” said Paige Kimble, executive director of the Scripps National Spelling Bee said in a press release. “We created RSVBee to address this very issue and make our iconic competition accessible to a wider population of children who love words and language and enjoy competitive spelling.”
This year, however, the field has been “narrowed to about 400 spellers for 2020, down from last year’s 562,” in response “to survey feedback from spellers, parents and sponsors of local spelling bee programs who favored a smaller cohort of spellers,” Kimble said.
“Parents can apply on behalf of their child for one of about 140 total RSVBee invitations at spellingbee.com/rsvbee beginning Feb. 11, 2020. The deadline to submit the online form is March 29,” the Scripps National Spelling Bee press release stated. “…The Bee will issue RSVBee invitations based on past performance in the national finals, grade level, participation in an unsponsored region or the largest, most competitive regions. The deadline for parents to accept their RSVBee invitation and pay the $1,500 participation fee is April 7, 2020, at 11:59.”
