Winner of DuPage County Spelling Bee announced
Hinsdale Middle School seventh-grader Srinidhi Rao won the 2023 DuPage County Spelling Bee, with the winning word arbacia, which is a genus of sea urchins. She will advance to the Scripps National Bee.
Twenty-two students represented their schools in the Feb. 22 county-wide spelling bee, hosted by the DuPage Regional Office of Education in Wheaton.
Stephanie Rische served as pronouncer for the competition, and the judges - tasked with tracking every word and verifying spelling accuracy - were Val Dranias, Luann Doman, and Rhonda Eubanks. Spellers prepared by studying Words of the Champions, the 4,000-word list provided by the Scripps National Spelling Bee.
Rao now advances to compete in the 2023 Scripps National Spelling Bee near Washington, D.C.
The semifinals on May 31 and the finals on June 1 will be televised on ION and Bounce. In addition to qualifying for the national competition, Rao also won:
• The Samuel Louis Sugarman Award, a 2023 United States Mint Proof Set provided by Jay Sugarman, chairman and CEO of iStar Financial, in honor of his father;
• A one-year subscription to the Britannica Online Premium, the premier online resource from Encyclopædia Britannica; and
• A one-year subscription to Merriam-Webster Unabridged Online, the official word source for all levels of competition for the Scripps National Spelling Bee.
Amber Quirk, the assistant regional superintendent of schools in DuPage County and coordinator of the Regional Bee, is a big proponent of the event.
"The spelling bee is an opportunity for students to learn to prepare, to persevere, and to compete. We are proud of all the spellers who participated in the event. It required a lot of hard work and preparation to compete at the county-wide level," Quirk said.
The DuPage Regional Office of Education is thankful to ComEd, who has sponsored the Regional Bee event for many years, and to Tyndale House Publisher, their newest sponsor.
"The support of ComEd and Tyndale allows DuPage County students to gain experience in public speaking, poise under pressure - and encourages them to follow their dreams," Quirk said.
The DuPage Regional Office of Education is also thankful for the many public and private schools in DuPage who participated in school and classroom spelling bees, motivating their students to have a lifelong curiosity for the English language.
The Scripps National Spelling Bee provides the list of words for the regional competition. The Bee reaches millions of students across the country and in other parts of the world with the classroom materials it provides to enrolled schools.
The DuPage Regional Office of Education is a service organization whose role is to provide high quality service and support to all stakeholders and collectively expend every effort to prepare DuPage County children for the world they will face. In addition to the myriad of services provided directly to educators and schools, the office also provides services and support to community members, private schools, parents, children, business leaders, and others. For more information, visit DuPageROE.org.
The Scripps National Spelling Bee, launched in 1925, is the nation's largest and longest-running educational program. Visit spellingbee.com for more information about the Scripps National Spelling Bee, which is administered on a nonprofit basis by The E.W. Scripps Company.