Cool and collected, Kavya Shivashankar wrote out every word on her palm and always ended with a smile. The 13-year-old Kansas girl saved the biggest smile for last, when she rattled off the letters to “Laodicean” to become the latest in a line of Indian-American spelling champions.
The budding neurosurgeon from Olathe, Kansas, outlasted 11 finalists on Thursday night to win the Scripps National Spelling Bee, taking home more than US$40,000 in cash and prizes and, of course, the huge champion’s trophy.
Eight Indian-Americans have now won the title, including six of the past 10 winners.
PHOTO: REUTERS
“I can’t believe it happened,” Kavya said. “It feels kind of unreal.”
Kavya won in her fourth appearance at the bee, having finished 10th, eighth and fourth over the last three years.
She enjoys playing the violin, bicycling, swimming and learning Indian classical dance, and her role model is Nupur Lala, the 1999 Indian-American champion featured in the documentary Spellbound.
Last year, a final-round mishap by Sidharth Chand allowed Sameer Mishra to claim the title. Both also share an Indian heritage and aspire to be neurosurgeons.
The run of champions with South Asian roots began with Balu Natarajan of Chicago, who became the first Indian-American national bee champion in 1985.
After spelling the winning word, which means lukewarm or indifferent in religion or politics, Kavya got huge hugs from father Mirle, mother Sandy and little sister Vanya.
“The competitiveness is in her,” Mirle Shivashankar said. “But she doesn’t show that. She still has that smile. That’s her quality.”
Kavya turned 13 last week but was too busy planning for the bee to have a party.
“This is the moment we’ve been waiting for; it’s a dream come true,” Mirle said. “We haven’t skipped meals, we haven’t lost sleep, but we’ve skipped a lot of social time.”
She’ll have more time for such festivities now that she’s retiring as a speller, but she’ll eventually need another outlet for her competitive nature. Her father said she might enter the ‘Brain Bee,’ a science-oriented contest that should suit her career goal well.”
“But I don’t think anything can replace spelling,” Kavya said. “Spelling has been such a big part of my life.”
Second place went to 12-year-old Tim Ruiter of Centreville, Virginia, the only non-teenager in the finals. He misspelled “Maecenas,” which means a cultural benefactor.
Aishwarya Pastapur, 13, from Springfield, Illinois, who loved to pump her arm and exclaim “Yes!” after getting a word correct, finished third after flubbing “menhir,” a type of monolith.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
DITCH TACTICS: Kenyan officers were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch suspected to have been deliberately dug by Haitian gang members A Kenyan policeman deployed in Haiti has gone missing after violent gangs attacked a group of officers on a rescue mission, a UN-backed multinational security mission said in a statement yesterday. The Kenyan officers on Tuesday were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch “suspected to have been deliberately dug by gangs,” the statement said, adding that “specialized teams have been deployed” to search for the missing officer. Local media outlets in Haiti reported that the officer had been killed and videos of a lifeless man clothed in Kenyan uniform were shared on social media. Gang violence has left
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
Japan unveiled a plan on Thursday to evacuate around 120,000 residents and tourists from its southern islets near Taiwan within six days in the event of an “emergency”. The plan was put together as “the security situation surrounding our nation grows severe” and with an “emergency” in mind, the government’s crisis management office said. Exactly what that emergency might be was left unspecified in the plan but it envisages the evacuation of around 120,000 people in five Japanese islets close to Taiwan. China claims Taiwan as part of its territory and has stepped up military pressure in recent years, including
RSS