New Jersey girl wins National Spelling Bee championship

Washington, June 2 (UNI) Eighth grader Katharine Close won the 79th Annual Scripps Howard National Spelling Bee held here by spelling "ursprache" correctly to become the first female champion in seven years.

I couldn't believe I knew how to spell the word,'' 13- year-old Close said after winning. She is the first champion ever to hail from New Jersey.

Ursprache, a noun, means a reconstructed, hypothetical parent language.

She won a cash prize of 30,000 dollars in cash, books worth 5,000 dollars, 2,500 dollars savings bond and a college scholarship for 5,000 dollars.

She defeated 274 contestants, including five Indian Americans, during the two-day competition.

This year's runner up was a Canadian native Finola Hackett, an eighth grader from Tofield, Alberta. She lost the championship when she misspelled "weltschmertz" in the 19th round.

The third place was claimed by Saryn Hooks, a 14-year-old from West Alexander Middle School in Taylorsville.

All the five Indian Americans, Rajiv Tarigopula, Kavya Shivashankar, Nidharshan Subra Anandasivam, Michael Christie and Samir Patel almost made it to the tenth round, but they got eliminated in the successive rounds.

Twelve-year-old Samir Patel, runner-up in last year's national spelling bee, sailed through "i-n-t-a-r-s-i-a" to take his place among 43 spellers moving into the fifth round. But could not sail through beyond three rounds Thursday and lost his chance at the national title.

Scripps said 136 girls and 139 boys aged between nine to 15 years who won their local spelling bees participated in this year's contest.

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