Universal Ramblings

Kavya Shivshankar, a 13-year-old Indian-American girl from Kansas has won the prestigious Scripps National Spelling Bee Championship 2009.

Kavya was declared the Spelling Bee champ after she correctly spelt “laodicean” at the end of the championship finals which comprised 11 students from all across the country, seven of whom were Indian-Americans.

Kavya is an eighth grader student from Olathe in Kansas.

She holds Nupur Lala, the 1999 Scripps National Spelling Bee champion, as her role model.

She had participated in the 2006, 2007, and 2008 national finals-tying for 10th, 8th, and 4th place, respectively. She wants to become a neurosurgeon.

Tim Ruiter, 12, a seventh grade student from Centreville, Virginia was declared the runner-up while Aishwarya Pastapur, 13, from Springfield in Illinois got the third position.

It is for the second time in a row that an Indian-American has won the Spelling Bee championship.

Last year, Sameer Mishra from Lafayette, Indiana, got the top position after he correctly spelt ‘guerdon’. Ragashree Ramachandran from Sacramento, California was the first Indian American to win the championship in 1988. Nupur Lala from Tampa, Florida won it in 1999.

Among other Indian-Americans to have won the championship were Pratyush Buddiga from Denver, Colorado in 2002, Sai R Gunturi from Dallas, Texas in 2003 and Anurag Kashyap from San Diego
, California in 2005.

In all, 293 spellers participated in the National Spelling Bee Championship in Washington for the past three days, with the finals being held last night.