San Diego Speller Advances In Scripps National Spelling Bee

SAN DIEGO, CA — A student from San Diego County advanced Tuesday to the quarterfinals of the Scripps National Spelling Bee.

Benjamin Evans, an eighth grader from Twin Peaks Middle School in Poway, correctly spelled "Gondwana" and correctly answered the vocabulary question, "What is a symposium?" Gondwana was a large landmass, sometimes referred to as a supercontinent, and a symposium is a conference at which people give speeches.

In the third round, he correctly spelled "lycopene," a red carotenoid pigment present in tomatoes and many berries and fruits.

Evans, who is 14, qualified for the national spelling bee by winning the 54th San Diego County Scripps Regional Spelling Bee in March at the Jackie Robinson YMCA in San Diego. Evans defeated runner-up Mihir Konkapaka, a two-time champion, who was eliminated in the fourth round of the 2023 Scripps National Spelling Bee.

"I can't believe what's happening," Evans said after the county competition. "I worked so hard for this."

The quarterfinals will take place Wednesday at the Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center in National Harbor, Maryland. The competition will be streamed on ION Plus, Bounce XL, Grit Xtra, Laff More and spellingbee.com.

The national bee began with 245 spellers from all 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, Guam, Canada, the Bahamas, Germany and Ghana. The field was the largest since 2019, and included six former finalists and three four-time national participants.

The national bee is limited to students in eighth grade or below and who were born Sept. 1, 2008 or later. Contestants for the 96th edition of the national competition are between 8 and 15 years old.

The winner will receive $50,000 from the Scripps National Spelling Bee, $2,500 and a reference library from the dictionary publisher Merriam-Webster, $400 in reference works from Encyclopedia Britannica and a three-year membership to Britannica Online Premium, and a $350 prize package from SugarBee Apple, including a SugarBee Apple gift basket and $250 gift card.

Two spellers from San Diego County have been named national spelling bee champions. Anurag Kashyap, a student from Poway, won in 2005, and Snigdha Nandipati, a student from Francis Parker School, won in 2012.