Merit Hope Namaste-Rose of Mt. Morris has reached orthography’s big stage, joining 233 other contestants for the Scripps National Spelling Bee.
The preliminary rounds start Tuesday in National Harbor, Maryland. The quarterfinals and semifinal are Wednesday and the finals will be Thursday night, which will be broadcast live on ION and Bounce at 6:40 p.m. from the Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center just outside of Washington, D.C.
[ Mount Morris student wins regional spelling bee in February ]
For the final two rounds, actor and children’s literacy advocate LeVar Burton will be the presenter.
This year’s champion will receive a $50,000 cash prize. All competitors get online subscriptions to a dictionary and encyclopedia and also receive a proof set of coins from the U.S. Mint.
It’s the first time since 2019 that the entire competition will be conducted in-person.
Namaste-Hope won the Lee-Ogle-Whiteside Spelling Bee on Feb. 24 in Dixon, correctly spelling “geocaching” in the 11th round. In an earlier round she’d spelled “vaccination,” appropriate given the COVID-19 pandemic.
The 14-year-old eighth-grader from David L. Rahn Junior High School is competitive when it comes to playing ping-pong and pickleball, according to her biography in the press materials provided by the bee.
Namaste-Hope declined an interview request ahead of the competition.
The first hurdle for Namaste-Hope is the three-round preliminaries, where she is matched against 38 other spellers.
That group includes three-time qualifiers Arnav Kolluru of Maroa-Forsyth Middle School in Decatur and Vikram Raju of Aurora, Colorado.
Raju, notably, advanced from the Denver Post Spelling Bee. That bee’s top 10 finalists included former Reagan Middle School student Kathleen Keesey — Lee-Ogle-Whiteside’s 2020 and 2021 champion — who attends Rocky Heights Middle School in Littleton, Colorado.
Kolluru and Namaste-Hope are among 14 qualifiers from Illinois. The others are Rehan Koshy, Advaith Balakrishnan, Avyay Kodali, Rumaysa Nadeem and Isaac Morowitz of Chicago, Sahasrad Sathish of Grayslake, Quinten Atutis of Freeport, Tejas Katira of Geneva, Max Foley of DeKalb, Jonathan Desir of Morris, Henry Olsen of Peoria, and Wolfgang Schaff of Loves Park.
The field includes four finalists from last year, including fourth-place finishers Dhroov Bharatia, Roy Siligman and Vivinsha Veduru, and seventh-place finisher Vihaan Sibal. All told, 45 competitors return from last year’s nationals.
The youngest competitors are 7-year-olds Matthew Yi of New Orleans and Nam Nguyen of Vermillion, South Dakota. The oldest is 15-year-old Charlie Palmore of Washington, D.C. The largest age group are 13-year-olds, of whom there are 81. Most —106 — are eighth graders.
There are 128 males, 105 females and 1 non-binary speller in the field. Twenty-three have relatives who competed in the nationals.
Seven come from parochial schools, 11 are home schooled, 11 are from charter schools, 40 come from private schools and 165 are the product of public schools.
The 2021 champion was Zaila Avant-garde of New Orleans, the first Black American winner, who spelled “Murraya” in the finals.
This year, the participants will take part in an opening ceremony on Monday and will visit Planet Word, an immersive language museum. There will also be tours of the D.C. area and an awards banquet and farewell party on Friday night.