Porterville girl 2-for-2 in National Spelling Bee, but misses spot in semis

Sameera Hussain, a sixth-grader from Porterville’s Westfield Elementary School, correctly spelled her two words Wednesday in the preliminary live rounds of the 2015 Scripps National Spelling Bee.

But she wasn’t one of the 49 competitors out of a 285-student field to advance to the semifinals at the Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center in National Harbor, Maryland, just south of Washington, D.C.

Sameera, 12, correctly spelled roodebok (a small African antelope) in preliminary round two and ikebana (the Japanese art of flower arrangement) in preliminary round three.

The preliminaries consisted of the two rounds of onstage oral spelling Wednesday, plus 26 written questions Tuesday split into 12 spelling words and three rounds of vocabulary words. The written test results are not immediately released; those results are combined with the first two rounds of live spelling to determine who advanced to the Wednesday night semifinals.

Spelling bee organizers said the best possible combined score in the three rounds is 36, and semifinal qualifiers needed at least a 29.

Sameera qualified for the national bee through a regional competition sponsored by the Visalia Times-Delta/Tulare Advance-Register. Westfield Elementary students and staff gave her a send-off last week.

According to her spelling bee profile, she also competes in Cyber Quest, a problem-solving competition, and is a runner and basketball player. She hopes to turn her interests in math and biology into a career as a neurologist.

This story was originally published May 27, 2015 at 12:23 PM with the headline "Porterville girl 2-for-2 in National Spelling Bee, but misses spot in semis."