Quick look: El Rancho Charter School seventh-grader Sydney Tran, representing Orange County at the Scripps National Spelling Bee this week, advanced through two preliminary rounds in Washington, D.C. Tuesday.
Happy Spelling Bee season.
El Rancho Charter School student Sydney Tran represented Orange County and the Orange Unified School District on one of the biggest academic stages in the country — the 100th annual Scripps National Spelling Bee, currently underway in Washington, D.C.
After winning the Orange County Spelling Bee in March by correctly spelling the word “obsecration” to cap 14 impressive rounds, seventh-grader Sydney earned her place among 243 top spellers from across the United States competing for the national title this week.
To prepare, students study a rigorous 4,000-word guide provided by Scripps called “Words of the Champions.” The competition begins with words from this list before advancing to more challenging, unstudied words pulled from Merriam-Webster Unabridged, the bee’s official dictionary.
Sydney and her fellow contestants kicked off bee week with a Memorial Day picnic at Nationals Park — home of the Washington Nationals baseball team — where families, educators and Scripps officials gathered to celebrate the students’ achievements and journeys to the national contest.
Sydney advanced through two rounds of the preliminaries Tuesday morning. In the first round, she spelled “merak,” a word meaning a blue star of the second magnitude in the constellation Ursa Major that forms part of the base of the Big Dipper. In the second round that tests vocabulary, she correctly defined “awry,” as something off course or gone wrong.
[Update on May 28: Although she impressed in the first two rounds, Sydney did not advance to the quarterfinals announced Tuesday evening. A full story on her experience at the national competition will be shared soon.]
The competition continues this week with the semifinalists announced Wednesday morning, following the quarterfinals event. The contest finals will be aired Thursday, May 29 starting at 8 p.m. EST on ION TV.
Follow along with the competition by streaming live from the Scripps National Spelling Bee site and tune into the live two-night finals event starting Wednesday at 8 p.m. EST on ION TV and streaming on iontv.com.