Bruhat Soma won the Scripps National Spelling Bee

OXON HILL, Md. (AP) — Bruhat Soma insisted he was stressed during idle hours while waiting to take the Scripps National Spelling Bee stage, and felt even more pressure to perform given that he hadn’t lost a spelling bee in eight months.

However, he never showed any nervousness in front of the microphone, and when the Bee suddenly went into a lightning tiebreaker known as the “spell,” he couldn’t have been more comfortable.

The 12-year-old, a seventh-grader from Tampa, Florida, was able to read 30 words in 90 seconds on Thursday night, looking more like an auctioneer than the best speller in the English language. The judges decided he spelled 29 words correctly. – Nine more than his competitor Faizan Zaki. As champion, Bruhat takes home a trophy and more than $50,000 in cash and prizes.

He practiced the spell every day for six months.

“I was quite confident that I had a chance to win because I was working hard,” Bruhat said, explaining his rationale for spending so much time in the tiebreak that he might not have needed. And I really wanted to win. That’s why I practiced spelling so much.

If he had known the way Scripps would run the final rounds, he could have spent more time on his speed drills. There was no doubt that Bruhat was a worthy champion, but the result left many observers disappointed and confused.

“I don’t think it was a good bee,” she said. Dev Shah, last year’s champion. “It’s not about spelling as many words as possible in 90 seconds. That’s not what a spelling bee is.

The finals started with eight spellers, the fewest since 2010, and it was clear Scripps was trying to fill the two-hour broadcast window on Ion, a network owned by the Cincinnati-based media company. Long and frequent commercial breaks allowed spellers to wander to the side of the stage and chat with their coaches, relatives and supporters.

Bee officials then announced that it was time for a tie-break before Bruhat and Faizan were given the opportunity to compete in a traditional round.

“I wish we could see more of them dueling,” said Charlotte Walsh, who finished second to Dave in 2023.

Competition rules stipulate that spelling be used in the interest of time, but Scripps still squeezed in another commercial break between the tiebreaker and the announcement of Bruhat’s win.

“It felt forced and manufactured,” Dave said.

Scripps said Bruhat’s winning word was “abseiling,” which was defined as “a descent in mountaineering by means of a rope coiled over a bump above.” In the tiebreaker – which has been used once before, and when Harini won Logan in 2022 The winning word is the one that gives the speller more correct words than his opponent.

Shortly after Bruhat was sprinkled with confetti and handed over the trophy, Faizan was crying at the side of the stage, accepting hugs from the other spellers. A few minutes ago, he had hugged his dear friend, Shri Parikh, after eliminating Shri.

Faizan wrote his last word in the regular competition in the exit manner, rushing through the “Nikori” without asking any questions and then returning to his seat, a moment that reminds us Shourav Dasari’s spelling of “Mogollon” on microphone In 2017.

But the 12-year-old student from Allen, Texas, was never given the chance to do it again.

“I definitely think they should have been given the opportunity to do some traditional spelling rounds before they failed the spelling bee,” said Scott Reimer, one of the four coaches who worked with Faizan.

Entering the competition, Bruhat won the “Words of Wisdom” award hosted by Rimmer, a former speller and study guide author. It won the SpellPundit bee organized by that study guide company. The first online contest was won by Dave, last year’s Scripps champion.

“I always want to win. And that was my main goal,” Bruhat said. “It doesn’t matter if I win with all these other bees. This is what I was aiming for. “So I’m really happy that I won this.”

His last loss was in September in the WishWin Senior Spelling Bee. He misspelled the word “Gloucester”, a cheese named after the city in England. He said he knew the city but didn’t know it was a cheese either, and guessed “Gloucester.”

“After that, I think I went on a winning streak,” he said.

Bruhat said there was one word he didn’t know Thursday night: “Tennessee,” which is a monetary unit for Turkmenistan. Ananya Prasanna got this right during the most diabolical tour of the bee, when every word had an unknown, obscure or non-existent origin language. The 13-year-old from Apex, North Carolina, finished in a tie for third place.

Bruhat is the second straight champion from the Tampa Bay area, and his win means that 29 of the last 35 spelling bee champions have been Indian-American. His parents migrated from the southern Indian state of Telangana, an area well represented in the population March of America’s Indian Heroes And competitors who started in 1999.

Nupur Lala was the winner that year and inspired a generation, especially after her victory was featured in the documentary “Spellbound.” Now a neuro-oncologist, Lala returned to the bee this year for the first time in a decade.

Bruhat’s win was also a proud moment for 16-year-old Sam Evans, who has been working with three of the first four winners. He also taught Faizan and Sheri, 12, from Rancho Cucamonga, California. Both are sixth-graders and have two years of eligibility remaining.

Evans often marveled at Bruhat, saying that his student could remember any word he saw, and that once he missed a word, he would never get it wrong again.

“He always says he’s nervous, but he doesn’t look nervous, like most of them look nervous,” Evans said. “I can’t explain it. I don’t know how he does it.”

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Ben Nuckols has covered the Scripps National Spelling Bee since 2012. Follow him on https://x.com/APBenNuckols