Indian American school boy wins 1st place in US spelling bee conte

Washington, May 31 (UNI) A 13-year-old Indian American school boy, who is studying in the eighth grade in an Indiana school won the prestigious Scripps National Spelling Bee trophy in the United States by spelling right 'guerdon', a word that means reward.

After a hard struggle all night yesterday that went into the 16th round Sameer Mishra defeated another Indian American student from Michigan, Sidharth Chand(12).

Indian school children have dominated the event in recent years, winning the championship five times in the last nine years. The last Indian winner was Anurag Kashyap in 2005 for correctly spelling 'appoggiatura'.

Sameer gets a 30,000 dollars cash prize and an engraved loving cup trophy from Scripps, a 2,500 dollars Savings Bond and a complete reference library from Merriam-Webster, a 5000 dollars cash prize from Sigma Phi Epsilon Educational Foundation and reference works valued at more than 3,800 dollars from Encyclopaedia Britannica.

This was Sameer's fourth year in the competition, having previously tied for 98th, 14th and 16th places in 2005, 2006 and 2007 respectively.

Sameer, who loves to read and is part of his school's book club, wants to become a neurosurgeon. His favorite subjects are science and math.

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