A rare ending to National Spelling Bee
OXON HILL, Md. (AP) — For the first time in 52 years, there are co-champions in the Scripps National Spelling Bee.
Sriram Hathwar of Painted Post, New York, and Ansun Sujoe
of Fort Worth, Texas, got back-to-back words wrong Thursday night.
Neither stumbled again, and a dozen words later, they ended up as co-champions of the bee.
Sriram is 14 years old. Ansun is 13.
One of the Minnesota competitors made it to the seminfinal round before dropping out.
Thirteen-year-old Mark Kivimaki, a seventh-grader at Valley View Middle School, correctly spelled his Round 5 word, "ebullition" but he then stumbled when he misspelled the word "Ananke ."
Minnesotans eliminated earlier were Shane DeSilva, an eighth-grader at Pacelli Catholic School in Austin; Lauren Crabtree, an eighth-grader at Forestview Middle School in Brainerd; Alyssa Boynton, a seventh-grader at Murray County Central School in Slayton; and Kellen Rufus Rodriguez, an eighth-grader at Fairmont High School.