The Brookings eighth grader who represented South Dakota at this week's Scripps National Spelling Bee made it to the third round of the contest that was won by a 13-year-old from Allen, Texas, who was runner-up last year.
Amanuel Gemechis, a 14-year-old student at George S. Mickelson Middle School in Brookings, earned the trip by out-spelling 27 other elementary and middle schoolers in March at the state spelling bee in Mitchell.
South Dakota News Watch, Dakota Wesleyan University and the South Dakota Humanities Council sponsored the state bee for the first time that sent Amanuel and his family to the Washington area.
It was his third trip to the state bee and the first time he won it. His older brother was also a competitor, which influenced him. He practiced every day after school.
At the national bee, Amanuel correctly spelled "Menaia" in the first round and in the second round for vocabulary correctly defined a cavalcade as "a procession." But his score in the third round test fell just one point short, so he did not advance.
The winner, Faizan Zaki, was the favorite entering the bee after his runner-up finish last year.
The bee celebrated its 100th anniversary this year. After last year's bee had little drama before an abrupt move to the spell-off, Scripps tweaked the competition rules, giving judges more leeway to let the competition play out before going to the tiebreaker. The nine finalists delivered.
During one stretch, six spellers got 28 consecutive words right, and there were three perfect rounds during the finals. The last time there was a single perfect round was the infamous 2019 bee, which ended in an eight-way tie.
With the winner’s haul of $52,500 added to his second-place prize of $25,000, Faizan increased his bee earnings to $77,500. His big splurge with his winnings last year? A $1,500 Rubik’s cube with 21 squares on each side. This time, he said he’d donate a large portion of his winnings to charity.
The bee began in 1925 when the Louisville Courier-Journal invited other newspapers to host spelling bees and send their champions to Washington. For the past 14 years, Scripps has hosted the competition at a convention center just outside the nation's capital, but the bee returns downtown next year to Constitution Hall, a nearly century-old concert venue near the White House.
The Associated Press contributed to this story produced by South Dakota News Watch, an independent, nonprofit organization. Read more stories and donate at sdnewswatch.org and sign up for an email to get stories when they're published. Contact: info@sdnewswatch.org.
