Pictured left to right are: First-place winner Indigo Satko, Wissahickon Middle School; third-place winner Anusha Verma, Perkiomen Valley Middle School West, and second-place winner Ryan Kumar, Perkiomen Valley Middle School East. (Photo provided by PSEA-CAPS)
Indigo Satko, an eighth grader from Wissahickon Middle School, is the champion of the Scripps Bucks-Mont regional spelling bee, besting competitors from Bucks and Montgomery county schools. His winning word was “neuropathy.” The competition involving 33 spellers lasted nine rounds.
Spellers competed at Wissahickon High School on March 16. Spellers studied “Words of the Champions,” the 4,000-word list provided by the Scripps National Spelling Bee, to prepare for the competition.
Bob Hipp, president of the Perkasie Rotary, served as emcee for the event and Victoria DeLong a speech-language pathologist at Perkiomen Valley School District, was pronouncer. The judges were MJ Davis, a purchasing agent at PennEngineering and Manufacturing; Bill McGill, a third-grade teacher at Perkiomen Valley School District, and Amy Roslevege, an eighth-grade teacher at Hazelton School District.
Indigo now advances to compete in the 2024 Scripps National Spelling Bee this summer near Washington, D.C. The semifinals on May 29 and the finals on May 30 will be televised on ION. He won the spelling bee at Wissahickon Middle School with the winning word, “stimulus.”
In addition to qualifying for the national competition, Indigo also wins a six-night, expense-paid trip for himself and one parent/guardian to Scripps National Spelling Bee in Maryland; a first-place trophy; The Samuel Louis Sugarman Award of a 2024 United States Mint Proof Set provided by Jay Sugarman, chairman and CEO of iStar Financial, in honor of his father; Britannica Online Premium, a one-year subscription for the premier online resource from Encyclopedia Britannica; Merriam-Webster Unabridged Online, a one-year subscription for the official word source for all levels of competition for the Scripps National Spelling Bee; Epic Family, a one-year subscription for the world’s largest digital library for kids with access to 40,000+ kids’ books, videos and audiobooks, and Tynker, a one-year home subscription for a leading K-12 creative coding platform plus eight live, 1-on-1 online coding classes.
“The hard work and dedication of our school champions is clear at our spelling bee each year,” said Bill Senavaitis, president of PSEA’s Mideastern Region. “The spelling skills of these students never fails to impress those who watch the spelling bee progress, particularly in the final rounds.”
The Scripps Bucks-Mont Regional Bee is sponsored by the Mideastern Region of the Pennsylvania State Education Association, the Council for the Advancement of Public Schools, and Merriam-Webster Dictionary.
Second and third place winners were Perkiomen Valley Middle School East 8th grader Ran Kumar, and Perkiomen Valley Middle School West 8th grader Anusha Verma, respectively. For placing second, Ryan received a second-place trophy; a copy of the Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, Eleventh Edition; and a $100 Amazon gift card. Anusha received a third-place trophy and a $50 Amazon gift card.
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 Scripps National Spelling Bee is the nation’s largest and longest-running educational program, having been launched in 1925. Visit spellingbee.com for more information about the Scripps National Spelling Bee, which is administered on a not-for-profit basis by The E.W. Scripps Company.
This article appears courtesy of a content share agreement between Wissahickon Now and The Ambler Gazette. To read more stories like this, visit the Ambler Gazette.
