Ranjana Ramesh didn’t make the final cut this week at the Scripps National Spelling Bee in Washington, but she came close.
Ramesh, 14, who won the Item’s regional bee in March, missed the final 50 by a point. The cutoff was 30 points, and she had 29. That part she accepts.
It was a bit harder for her to sit there Thursday night and silently spell words her fellow contestants handled correctly to force an unprecedented and dramatic conclusion.
Eight spellers were declared co-winners Thursday when the organizers simply ran out of words challenging enough to stump the contestants.
“We are closely connected to the difficulty level at the program, so we are quite aware of the rising level of competition. This does not actually surprise us at all,” said Paige Kimble, the bee’s executive director. “We didn’t go into the competition tonight not knowing that this was a possibility.”
When the field was finally whittled down to eight, pronouncer Jacques Bailly told the spellers and their families in the audience that while there were plenty of words remaining on the organizers’ list, “we will soon run out of words that will possibly challenge you, the most phenomenal collection of super spellers in the history of the competition.”
He said the bee committee had decided that it would go three more rounds, and whoever was left at the end would be declared a co-champion. Nobody flinched.
Ramesh, of Chelmsford, an eighth grade student from Ste. Jean D’Arc School in Lowell, said that while not being in the finals was hard for her, she accepted the outcome.
“This is the Scripps national bee,” she said. “I’m glad to have had the opportunity to test myself against the best spellers in the country.”
Still, she couldn’t help but note that most of the words those boys and girls were spelling correctly in that final round, she was spelling correctly as she listened along.
“That gave me some satisfaction,” she said. “I really enjoyed taking it in. I loved the passion, because I have the passion too.”
Another thing Ramesh noted was that more people were approaching words by asking for the root — which is something she’s learned in her years competing in spelling bees.
When Thursday dawned, there were 50 spellers in the final. It took 5 1/2 hours to whittle that number down to 16. By 11 p.m. Thursday night, there were eight spellers left. All eight received $50,000 from Scripps.
The contest, which featured 567 top spellers in the United States, was held this week in National Harbor, Md.
Ramesh was competing for the second year in a row. She emerged from a group of 94 spellers in March, which encompassed a district of 110 schools ranging in locales from Greater Lynn to Chelmsford, Maynard and Ashburnham.
Ramesh ended up 29 points over the first round of the tournament Monday, netting 23 out of 30 points in the preliminary round, which consisted of a written exam.
She followed that up by spelling her words correctly through the oral rounds Tuesday and Wednesday, giving her 29 points after three days.
“I stood on stage, and waited with bated breath for the finalists to be announced,” Ramesh wrote to Joel Abramson of Marblehead, a co-sponsor of the Item bee in March.
Sadly for her, the cutoff to make the finals was 30, leaving her a point shy.
“I’m very, very disappointed and sorry to have fallen just short,” she said. “I was looking forward to representing our region … Without (the help of the Abramsons), and The Daily Item’s help, I never would have been able to represent a region. I hoped to make the region proud in the finals, but I guess my Scripps journey ends here.”
She will attend Central Catholic High School in Lawrence in the fall.
Ramesh said her brother, Navin, hopes to enter the Item bee next year.
“(Ramesh) was a great representative of the region and will do very well in whatever path she chooses in life,” Abramson said.