"And there are tens of thousands of spelling bees going on all across the United States, so there is no practical process to go into each of those spelling bees and identify, gauge the competitive level of those programs."Ĭameron Keith of Boulder, Colorado, a 13-year-old who qualified for the bee for the fourth time and advanced to the finals, said the wild-card program should be reined in. "What is second place in one community might be 30th place in another community in terms of competitive level, difficulty level," Kimble said. Paige Kimble, the bee's executive director, said there's no fair way to evaluate spellers' proficiency based on their performance in regional bees. Wild cards are required to have won a bee at only the school level. There were 17 wild cards age 9 or younger, and none of those advanced to the finals. But this year's wild cards also included dozens of first-timers and younger spellers. Scripps' goal for the wild-card program was to give opportunities to spellers who've been to nationals before, who are running out of eligibility - the bee is open to kids through eighth grade - or who come from highly competitive regions. The preliminary rounds featured wild-card spellers who were clearly overwhelmed by words including "tendon," ''vestibule," ''allocation" and "gyro." Letting in spellers who are unprepared, former top-10 speller Siyona Mishra said, is creating "a bad reputation for the program."
SPELL COMPOSURE PLUS
The wild-card program that allows spellers to pay their way into the bee if they don't win at the regional or state level is almost certainly here to stay, given that last year's champion was a wild card.īut there are concerns among current and former spellers that too many kids are showing up at nationals just because their families are able to afford the $1,500 entry fee, plus travel, lodging and expenses. "It depends on the speller - if you like to be organized, or if you don't," Shruthika said. Should other spellers follow her example? "It helps me to have a routine to follow, whether I choose to stick to it or not." "I always do repeat the word and write on my hand," she said. She doesn't always ask the same questions or take the same amount of time, but she never gets harried. The rest of the routine has evolved over time, and she stresses that she's not a robot. Shruthika has been pretending to write on her hand since she started competing in bees at age 6. The biggest shock among the finalists was a speller who didn't make it: Naysa Modi, last year's runner-up, who competed in her fifth and final bee. She was among 50 spellers who advanced to Thursday's finals, including nine who were tied for 10th or better last year. Shruthika, a 13-year-old from Cherry Hill, New Jersey, has finished in the top 10 each of the past two years at Scripps.
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