The 2019 Scripps National Spelling Bee was an historic one, as eight students set a record for the most co-champions in the competition’s history by all going perfect through 20 rounds in the finals.
Rishik Gandhasri, Erin Howard, Saketh Sundar, Shruthika Padhy, Sohum Sukhatankar, Abhijay Kodali, Christopher Serrao, and Rohan Raja all managed to defeat the dictionary on Thursday night in a wildly impressive performance. In total, the spellers combined to correctly spell the final 47 words of the competition and complete five perfect rounds to close it out. The great news is that all eight will receive their own trophy as well as each getting the full $50,000 scholarship for being a co-champion — which all of them learned on stage at the end.
The words spelled in the final round were, as one would assume, quite difficult but all eight seemed to be more than comfortable with the words and, after doing their due diligence on definition and country of origin, rattled them off without too much trouble. It’s an incredible achievement to win the National Spelling Bee and for all eight of the finalists to get through the last rounds correctly was great because it would’ve been gut-wrenching for one of them to fall short late.
You can watch all eight correctly spell their final word below. My favorite being Sohum, who rips through his word without so much as a second thought.
https://twitter.com/BaileyCarlin/status/1134307964146208773
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