Karthik Nemmani (left) poses with the championship trophy after he correctly spelled the word ‘koinonia’ to win the Scripps National Spelling Bee on May 31, 2018 in National Harbor, Maryland. Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images hide caption
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Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
The Scripps National Spelling Bee celebrates its 100th anniversary this week.
The annual competition where students put their spelling skills to the test began in 1925 when nine newspapers hosted a spelling bee. Only nine spellers participated in that first competition. Millions of spellers have participated since then.
NPR spoke with champions from different generations to reflect on how the competition has impacted their lives.
In 2018, at the age of 14, Karthik Nemmani won the Bee with the word “koinonia,” a Greek term meaning fellowship. He says it’s not a word that comes up in casual conversation.
“The only time I’ve ever used it is when someone asked me, ‘Oh, what was your winning word?,'” he said.
Nemmani, now 21, said the discipline for learning to spell elaborate words has helped him in his academic life. He just completed his junior year at the University of Texas at Austin, pursuing a double major in computer science and linguistics.
“I think I’ve always been more of a problem solver type of person,” Nemmani said.
To compete in the Scripps National Spelling Bee, spellers must not have passed beyond eighth grade or reached their 15th birthday.
Nupur Lala won the 1999 spelling bee with the word “logorrhea,” meaning excessive or incoherent talkativeness. Her victory was featured in the 2002 documentary Spellbound.
Lala, 40, said her spelling bee experience prepared her for her career as a neuro-oncologist who specializes in the treatment of brain and spine tumors.
“I learned to absorb a lot of information quickly,” she said. “In this field, there seem to be multiple conditions with polysyllabic names. So I say that I got a head start.”
Lala is getting married next month.
“We’re going to have spelling bee friends at the wedding.” Lala said. “I stayed friends with kids I did spelling bees with.”
Spelling will also be part of the ceremony. Her fiancé will include spelling in his vows.
“He’s an excellent speller. Believe it or not, not that that was a criterion for marriage or anything,” she said.
John Paola, who won the 50th National Spelling Bee in 1977 with the word “cambist,” a dealer in bills of exchange. “Fortunately for me, it was a phonetic spelling. C-A-M-B-I-S-T,” he said.
Paola went on to become a veterinarian based in Annapolis, Md.
He stills remembers his in-person interview to get into veterinary school.
“My two interviewers only wanted to talk about the National Spelling Bee. There were no questions about what drove me to be a veterinarian or what my goals were in my professional career,” he said. “But I really enjoyed that because it’s a topic I have never grown tired of talking about.”
Now 62, Paola plans to retire in July.
He says that winning the spelling bee is the academic achievement he is most proud of.
“I mean, I went to vet school and I became a veterinarian and that’s super awesome and it’s been a great career, but I still feel like the spelling bee was so unique that it’ll always be the most special thing to me,” he said.
Preliminaries for this year’s Scripps National Spelling Bee begin on Tuesday. Semifinals and finals are available to watch via ION, a Scripps TV network.
The radio version of this story was edited by Adriana Gallardo. Majd Al-Waheidi adapted it for digital.
