Indian American wins prestigious US spelling bee

Washington, May 31 (IANS) Sameer Mishra, 13, an eighth grader Indian American from Indiana, has won back the Scripps National Spelling Bee trophy in the United States by spelling right "guerdon", a word that appropriately means reward.

After a ding-dong battle Friday night that went into the 16th round Sameer Mishra outsmarted Sidharth Chand, 12, another Indian American from Michigan, who tripped on "prosopopoeia" or a personification of inanimate things.

Indian kids have dominated the event in recent years, winning the championship five times in the last nine years. The last Indian winner was Anurag Kashyap in 2005 correctly spelling 'appoggiatura'.

For his labours Sameer gets a $30,000 cash prize and an engraved loving cup trophy from Scripps, a $2,500 US Savings Bond and a complete reference library From Merriam-Webster, a $5000 cash prize From Sigma Phi Epsilon Educational Foundation and reference works valued at more than $3,800 from Encyclopædia Britannica.

This was Sameer's fourth year in the competition, having previously tied for 98th, 14th and 16th places in 2005, 2006 and 2007 respectively. Sameer aspires to a career as a neurosurgeon. His sister Shruti, a three-year competitor in the Scripps National Spelling Bee, is his spelling coach.

Sameer loves to read and is part of his school's book club. He enjoys playing computer and video games, as well as board games. Sameer has played the violin for four years in his school orchestra.

He also likes to ride his bike and hang out with his friends. His favorite subjects are science and math. Sameer is a competitive student; he participates in contests such as Spell Bowl, Academic Super Bowl and Indiana State School Music Association.

Two other Indian Americans figured among the top eight with Kavya Shivashankar, 12, a 7th grader from Kansas tied in the 4th place. Kavya who was tied for 10th place in 2006 and for 8th place in 2007 tripped on "écrasé" in the 11th round.

Jahnavi Iyer, 14, an 8th grader from Pennsylvania tied in the eighth place after stumbling on "parfleche" in the 10th round. Sharing the eighth spot with her was Justin Song, 13, another 8th grader from California who could not spell "satyagraha" right.

Nine of the 30 Indian American participants were among the 45 spellers who made it to the semi finals of the 83-year-old competition Thursday. Five of them, Easun Arunachalam, Arushi Jauhari, Shiva Kangeyan, Vaibhav Vavilala and Akshat Shekhar failed to figure among twelve finalists.

Sriram Hathwar, an 8-year-old Indian American boy became the youngest speller in the history of the Scripps National Spelling Bee Thursday even as he could not go too far in the popular contest because of his score in a written test.

In all, 288 children in the 8-15 age group from across the US, Canada and eight other countries qualified for the gruelling two-day competition.