Remember Ananya Vinay? She’s still winning spelling bees
Ananya Vinay keeps on racking up spelling bee victories.
Last year’s Scripps National Spelling Bee champion won this year’s Fresno County middle school spelling competition held at Fresno State in March and went on to win the 2018 California State Junior High Spelling Bee on May 5 in San Rafael. Fresno student Dalia Sheikh took 18th place at the middle school competition.
The rules say past winners of the national competition are not allowed to compete again.
Two Fresno County fifth-graders took part in the state elementary school spelling competition May 12 in Stockton. Shiv Mehrotra-Varma of Fugman Elementary, who is coached by Ananya,was eliminated in the third round and Kevin Narang of Sanger Academy Charter School was eliminated in the second round.
Shiv is next headed to the national bee as Ananya’s Fresno County successor after winning this year’s elementary school competition, which served as the national qualifier.
One other central San Joaquin Valley student is headed to the national bee. Jaskarn Singh, an eighth-grader at Alpine Vista School in Tulare, won the Tulare County qualifier sponsored by the Visalia Times-Delta/Tulare Advance-Register.
Cresencio Rodriguez-Delgado: 559-441-6304, @cres_guez
This story was originally published May 15, 2018 at 10:15 AM with the headline "Remember Ananya Vinay? She’s still winning spelling bees."