As they have been for the last nine consecutive years (and 14 of the last 19), the winners are the children of Indian immigrants. The 11-year-old Janga is the youngest contestant ever to win.
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Nihar Janga came joint first with 13-year-old Jairam Hathwar as the 89th Scripps National Spelling Bee for youngsters ended in a dead heat for the third year in a row.
The Cowboys wide receiver apparently was tuned in to the Scripps National Spelling Bee on Thursday night, and 11-year-old Nihar Janga caught Bryant’s eye.
Hathwar is from Painted Post, New York, and is in seventh grade at the Alternative School for Math and Science, according to his bio.
The final round of the annual Scripps National Spelling Bee on ESPN Thursday night was great TV – and also a potent illustration of the value of live television.
If you’re in South Dakota, Oklahoma, or MI, you likely don’t know how to spell the word “gray”.
“I wanted to win, but at the same time, I felt really bad for Jairam”, Nihar said.
Nihar thanked his mother and added: “I can’t say anything”.
It was the second straight year that a sibling of a past champion won the bee.
“This was such an inspiration”, Jairam said, adding that if he had not won the Spelling Bee he would not have been on this stage.
Last year’s winners were Vanya Shivashankar of Olathe, Kansas, and Gokul Venkatachalam of Chesterfield, Mo. It seems Jairam and Sriram are the Eli, 35, and Peyton Manning, 40, of Spelling Bees.
He hopes to attend Harvard University to study medicine someday so that he can become a physician. Tying Amazon’s Kindle e-reader to the spelling tournament is a marketing no-brainer, frankly, considering the Kindle and the bee are both all about words.
“One user whose Twitter handle is @themotherfanboy shared the screenshot of the exchange, writing “@ScrippsBee at it’s best”. Rounds two and three took place on May 25.
Harshita Shet, 12, of White Plains, N.Y., works on the spelling of “Stockholm” in Round 3 of the 2016 Scripps National Spelling Bee in National Harbor, Md., on May 25, 2016.
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The grandfather of finalist Cooper Komatsu competed in 1955.
