The 12-year-old Indian-origin boy scripts history, as Bruhat Soma wins the Scripps National Spelling Bee competition on Thursday night.
Remaining undefeated throughout the competition, the Indian American boy spelled all 29 words correctly in a tiebreaker, defeating Faizan Zaki by nine words, to win the title.
After the competition, he was awarded a trophy and $50,000 in cash and prizes.
Previously, the seventh grader from Tampa, Florida, clinched victory in three consecutive spelling bees before arriving at the convention center outside Washington, D.C for the prestigious spelling competition in English.
#Speller47 Bruhat Soma from Florida cemented his win by correctly spelling his final word, “abseil.” pic.twitter.com/SQtRZZvYHH
— Scripps National Spelling Bee (@ScrippsBee) May 31, 2024
Talking about his win, bruhat expressed a great deal of happiness.
“I always want to win. And this was, like, my main goal…It didn’t matter if I won all those other bees. This is what I was aiming for. So, I’m just really happy that I won this.” The bee began with eight finalists, the fewest since 2010. From the start, it was clear that Scripps was trying to fill the 2-hour broadcast window on Ion, a network owned by the Cincinnati-based media company.” said bruhat in the aftermath of the competition.
Meanwhile, Faizan was in tears, and later, accepted hugs from other spellers. But faizan did spell his final word “nicuri,” with a good speed, however, he wasn’t given chance.
Talking about this chance, Faizan’s coach Scott Remer said, “I definitely think they should have been given an opportunity to have some conventional spelling rounds before they defaulted to the spell-off.”
But he clarified, there is no need for drama through artificial means. “I don’t think it really needs an additional injection of drama through artificial means.”
Inspite of the controversy, Bruhat won the competition. Earlier, he also won Words of Wisdom bee, the SpellPundit bee and an online bee emceed by last year Scripps champion Dev Shah.
His parents came from Telangana, India. Which is well-famous for its spelling bee community.
His coach Sam Evans has also worked with three out of four finishers. Praising his performance, the 16-year-old coach said, “It’s all his hard work. I’m very happy that I could use my experience to help him, but at the end of the day, it’s all about his hard work and his dedication…I’m so happy for him.”
