In their way, they are Olympians and spelling superheroes rolled into one. They leap words such as "humuhumunukunukuapuaa" in a single bound.
They are in pursuit of spelling gold, as it were, and in these last few days before the 85th annual Scripps National Spelling Bee, the 278 competitors are filled with anticipation.
"I'm as prepared as I've ever been," says Nicholas Rushlow of Pickerington, Ohio, age 14 and Speller No. 193. How prepared? After losing in last year's semifinals, Nicholas spent his summer "vacation" going through the dictionary until his mother had quizzed him on roughly 500,000 words; it took a mere 600 hours.
"My friends don't ever need to pull out their phones and look up something," he says. "They just ask me."
Ranging in age from 6 to 15 years old, 278 spellers from the 50 U.S. states and points beyond -- from China to New Zealand -- will on May 29-31 be at their Olympiad. The venue is the Gaylord National Resort & Convention Center in National Harbor, Md., near Washington, D.C.
Arvind V. Mahankali, 12 and Speller No. 162, from New York City, is perhaps the odds-on favorite after finishing third last year. He recently prepped for his anticipated place onstage in the finals -- ESPN again will provide live coverage -- by destroying daytime talk-show host and CNN anchor Anderson Cooper in a mock spelling bee.
For all of Cooper's professional poise on camera, young Arvind clearly was the more confident competitor. If Arvind did not immediately know a word and its spelling, he would ask for a definition and the language of origin.
At the elite level, knowing a word such as "abecedarian" originates from Middle English or Medieval Latin is a huge help. The first "e" is silent in "abecedarian," and so Cooper was justifiably amazed. Then again, next to Arvind, Cooper looked like the very definition of "abecedarian": a person who is learning the letters of the alphabet.
"The aim of any contestant is to have an intelligent guess when you come across a word you've never heard before or aren't familiar with," says Jacques Bailly, the Bee's pronouncer and, when 14, winner of the 1980 contest.
Gina Solomito, 14 and Speller No. 79, from Indianapolis, reached last year's semifinals. She also is a gymnast. Staying on the balance beam is not so different from getting every letter right in "humuhumunukunukuapuaa," which, by the way, is either of two types of triggerfishes of Indo-Pacific coral reefs (but then you knew that, right?).
"In gymnastics, you have to be confident," Gina says. "If you think you'll fall and hurt yourself, you'll fall and hurt yourself."
And so it is with spelling. To miss a word is to fall. And you don't forget falling. "Caffeol" may mean a "fragrant oil produced by roasting coffee," but to Nicholas Rushlow the word has a memorable stench because he misspelled it in last year's competition.
While 84 percent of the spellers are ages 12 to 14, youth will be served at this year's Bee, too. Lori Anne Madison, Speller No. 269, from Woodbridge, Va., is, at 6, the youngest speller in Scripps National Spelling Bee history. And though Vanya Shivashankar, Speller No. 92, from Olathe, Kan., is only 10, she must be considered a contender.
Three years ago, Vanya's older sister, Kavya, won the Bee. Now, as then, the family coach/trainer is Mirle Shivashankar -- the girls' father. He stresses knowledge of languages and word roots, noting, "If it was just memorization, there is no way you could keep up." He adds: "If I can repeat the same thing with Vanya and win, I can prove I have a process."
And yes, he would like to write a book.
But Mirle Shivashankar also emphasizes a "no-pressure" approach and eschews the idea of rivalries -- "We compete against the dictionary" is the family mantra -- even as he says that competitive spellers must, like great athletes, possess a fire from within: "How much do you want to win?"
Bee Director Paige Kimble -- Paige Pipkin back when she won the national contest in 1981 by correctly spelling "sarcophagus," a stone coffin -- says that unlike with Little League and other pursuits, young spellers have a built-in escape hatch if they burn out and their parents do not.
"They simply misspell," she explains, "because when you misspell you're out."
This isn't something that Gina Solomito wants to do. But missing a word worries her mother, Michelle Solomito, more than, say, Gina missing the uneven bars.
"I'm much more nervous at the Spelling Bee," Michelle Solomito says. "When you're spelling, you've been studying for years -- invested so much time and energy -- and one little letter can get you out. In gymnastics, she's on lots of cushy things."
(Contact Don Wade at stories(at)shns.com.)
INFO BOX
About the 2012 Scripps National Spelling Bee
Sponsor: E.W. Scripps Co. of Cincinnati.
When: May 29-31.
Where: Gaylord National Resort & Convention Center in National Harbor, Md., near Washington, D.C.
How to watch:
Preliminaries -- May 30, 8 a.m.-5:30 p.m. EDT. Live on ESPN3.com.
Semifinals
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