Nihar Saireddy Janga, 11, of Austin, Texas, is lifted up as he celebrates being named the co-champion of the Scripps National Spelling Bee in National Harbor, Md., Thursday, May 26, 2016.
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Each champion correctly spelled 36 words on stage to win the title. “Whether it is the muscles of the body, or the muscles of the brain, it is still a sport”.
I get that some people will see a third straight co-championship as a sign of the Participation Trophy Era of American sports, where we’re so afraid to tell children they lost that we gave everybody a trophy to make them feel good about themselves. “I can’t sit down”.
Eighth grader Snehaa Ganesh Kumar from California, who had tied for fourth place previous year, came third.
It was the words “Feldenkrais” and “Gesellschaft” that made Jairam Hathwar and Nihar Janga co-champions of the US Scripps National Spelling Bee.
Nihar is the first first-time victor since 2000, and youngest victor in 14 years to win the Bee.
Jairam misspelled two words, but both times, Nihar followed up with a miss and the bee continued.
The spellers will take home $40,000 in cash and other prizes.
Congratulations to Nihar and Jairam!
“Hathwar and Janga both proved their depth of knowledge of root words and word origins to master round after round of some of the most challenging words in the English language”, said Boehne.
Competition is so fierce in the spelling bee that entrants are now fluent in Latin and Greek roots of the most hard words.
In 2014, Sriram Hathwar and Ansun Sujoe were declared the joint winners.
Among the words they got right: Kjeldahl, Hohenzollern, juamave, groenedael, zindiq and euchologion. Snehaa and Sylvie are 13-year-old eighth-graders who have exhausted their bee eligibility.
“He (brother) won the Spelling bee”. He was the second speller eliminated in primetime Thursday. “He’s going to go places”. Jairam, on the other hand, wants to go to Harvard to study medicine so he could become a physician.
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The competition began Tuesday with 285 spellers who advanced to the Scripps National Spelling Bee after beating the odds to reach this level.
