Columbus eighth-grader beats out brother, previous champion to win spelling bee title
The brother of last year’s champion has won the Muscogee County School District 2020 Spelling Bee champion.
Suhas Tadiparthi, an eighth-grader at Midland Middle School, prevailed during Monday’s competition among 44 students in grades 4-8 at the Rainey-McCullers School of the Arts auditorium.
They qualified by finishing first in their school’s spelling bee or, if the winner couldn’t attend, by finishing second — and Suhas beat his brother, Ryan, in the final round of Midland’s bee.
Ryan finished fourth in the state bee last year. So just to reach this stage was a major accomplishment for Suhas, he said.
“It felt good,” said Suhas, 13. “It felt really good.”
Then prevailing this year over MCSD runner-up also was tough, because Aaron Cohn Middle School seventh-grader Owen Steele was the 2018 MCSD champion as a fifth-grader at Hannan Magnet Academy and finished second in the state that year.
As this year’s MCSD winner and runner-up, Suhas and Owen are among the 22 students who qualified for the Georgia Region 6 Spelling Bee, Feb. 22, in the Pettigrew Center at Fort Valley State University, starting at 10 a.m.
The winners and runners-up from the 10 regions qualify for the Georgia Association of Educators State Spelling Bee, March 13, at the Georgia State University Student Center in Atlanta, starting at 11 a.m.
The state winner qualifies for the Scripps National Spelling Bee, May 24-29, in Washington, D.C.
As the final two on stage, Suhas and Owen each spelled 10 straight words. In the 23rd round, Owen misspelled “epistolary” and Suhas spelled “froufrou,” then spelling “marionette” to take the title.
Blanchard Elementary School fourth-grader Edward Boughner finished third.
Based on his mother’s advice, Suhas said, he was extra cautious about assuring her heard the word, so he asked the pronouncer to repeat the word. He also sometimes asked for the definition, the derivation or to use it in a sentence, even though he knew all the words he was given and didn’t guess, he said.
His most difficult words, Suhas said, were “nuance” and “oculus,” but the hardest part of the competition was “the suspense when I was about to step up to the mic. My heart was beating really fast, and I might say a word wrong or forget.”
After losing in his classroom’s spelling bee last year, Suhas was motivated to do better when he saw his brother excel.
To get to the MCSD bee for the first time in his last year of eligibility, Suhas not only studied word lists and trained on the Quizlet app, he said, but he learned to spell well by reading books for pleasure. His favorites are from the “Harry Potter” series.
The pronouncer for MCSD’s bee was Elliott Schwartz, financial vice president for investments at Wells Fargo Advisors. The judges were retired GAE vice president Sandra Hawthorne, retired MCSD teacher Earle Powell and WRBL account executive, producer and host of “Our Kitchen” Pegi Taylor.
MISSPELLED WORDS
These are the words the 44 contestants misspelled during the Muscogee County School District 2020 Spelling Bee. Would have you gotten them right?
Round 1
- hunky-dory
- squawk
- commotion
- garland
- caroling or carolling
- surmised
- tarry
- vacancy
- barrier
Round 2
- hazmat
- Antarctic
- turbulent
- appetite
- vortices
- anagrams
- cannonade
- lacrosse
- haughty
- sojourner
- colossal
- Himalayan
- diaphoresis
- Connemara
Round 3
- holiday
Round 4
- omen
Round 5
- boorish
- manifesto
- gelato
Round 6
- cattail
- prejudice
- flabbergast
- arborio
- fabulist
Round 7
- extinguish
- gauntlet
- fallacy
- piratical
Round 8
- syllabus
- hermitage
- gossamer
Round 10
- cemetery
Round 11
- sapphire
- gladiatorial
Round 12
- attributive
Round 23
- epistolary
This story was originally published January 13, 2020 at 3:00 PM.
