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Baldwin School Student Competes in Spelling Bee

Neelam Pandya joined 27 other students vying to advance to the national competition.

Spelling bee contender Neelam Pandya took on the sack with ease, but the quiche dished up at the competition was tough to finish.

The 10-year-old fifth-grader from the Baldwin School in Bryn Mawr spelled “gunnysack” correctly during the first round of the 63rd annual Times Herald Spelling Bee on Friday night, which featured 28 students in grades 5 through 8 from across Montgomery County, vying for the chance to advance to the Scripps National Spelling Bee in Washington, D.C.

Neelam, who lives in Wayne, was eliminated when she misspelled “quiche” in round two.

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The Baldwin School chose Neelam to represent them in the regional competition, but the school did not hold its own spelling bee in order to decide which student to send, Neelam said.

When Neelam took the stage of the Norristown Area High School auditorium and was asked to spell “quiche,” she uttered only “k” before a bell rang, signaling that she had misspelled the first letter of the word.

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By the end of round two, nearly half of the contestants had been eliminated.

In an interview during an intermission, Neelam said she thought quiche started with a “k” based on how the word is pronounced.

Although she was nervous before the competition started, Neelam said she got over her jitters.

“It wasn’t as bad as I thought it was going to be,” Neelam said after competing.

Spelling is one of Neelam’s favorite subjects along with math, science and art, she said.

“I think spelling is actually fun because it’s easy,” Neelam said.

Neelam’s mother, Rashmi Pandya, said she was happy that her daughter had gotten to take part in the regional spelling bee for the first time.

“She tried it.  I’m very happy she did,” Pandya said.  “And I wanted this to be a good experience for her.”

Pandya said she helped her daughter to prepare for the spelling bee by going through a “list of 450 official spelling bee words” that all of the contestants were given in advance.

“We went through them all,” Pandya said.

This is the first year that the sponsor of the spelling bee, the Times Herald, has allowed 5th graders, such as Neelam, to participate in the competition, Pandya said.

The Times Herald decided to include fifth graders this year because some school districts in Montgomery County have schools which are comprised of fifth and sixth grades, as opposed to traditional middle schools which include grades 6 through 8, said Stan Huskey, editor of the Times Herald.

The winner of the Times Herald spelling bee was Michael Duong, 14, an eighth grader at Arcola Intermediate School, which is part of the Methacton School District.

Michael correctly spelled the word tritium after the second place winner, Neha Bhardwaj of Indian Valley Middle School, misspelled the word as “t-r-i-d-i-u-m.”

Merriam-Webster’s online dictionary defines tritium as “a radioactive isotope of hydrogen that has one proton and two neutrons in its nucleus and that has three times the mass of ordinary hydrogen.”

Michael then won the competition by correctly spelling a second and final word, bolshevik, a word which Merriam-Webster’s online dictionary defines as “1. a member of the extremist wing of the Russian Social Democratic party that seized power in Russia by the Revolution of November 1917 2. communist.”

“I feel great, ecstatic, completely jubilant,” Michael said about his win.

He said he prepared for the spelling bee by going through the list of words that all of the contestants were given in advance. Michael said he looked up the roots of different words in the dictionary and because he enjoys math, he said he found it helpful to assign difficult words a number which corresponded alphabetically to the first letter of each word.

As the first-place winner, Michael won a trip to Washington, D.C. to compete in the Scripps National Spelling Bee, a trophy cup and several other prizes.

The other top contestants in the spelling bee, who also received prizes, were Neha Bhardwaj of Indian Valley Middle School in second place, Nicolas Irvin of Pottstown Middle School in third place, Kira Brice of Perkiomen Valley East in fourth place, and Elisabeth Juechser of Visitation of the Blessed Virgin Mary Elementary School in Norristown in fifth place.

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