Scripps Spelling Bee 2018: Meet The California Spellers

CALIFORNIA — More than 500 spellers are taking part in 2018’s Scripps National Spelling Bee, which officially kicked off Tuesday in Maryland. Of the 519 participants taking part in the annual competition, 45 are from California.

The preliminary rounds began Tuesday and continue Wednesday, and the finals will be held on Thursday, May 31. You can watch the Bee today on ESPN 3. For the finals, tune into ESPN 2 from 7 - 11 a.m. for Part 1 and for Part 2, tune into ESPN at 5:30 p.m.

The preliminaries consist of a multiple choice test and two rounds of spelling onstage, known as round 2 and round 3 respectively, Scripps explains. Spellers are eliminated for spelling incorrectly in either of the onstage rounds. After rounds 2 and 3, no more than 50 spellers head to the finals. (Read the full competition rules here.)

Here are the California spellers taking part in the competition:

• Sydney Cho, Bakersfield
• Anita Beroza, Belmont
• Aisha Randhawa, Corona
• Anisha Rao, Dublin
• Nathan Ostermann, El Centro
• Anish Samanu, Folsom
• Sebastian Arias-Obando, Folsom
• Una Alesandra Santos, Fontana
• Ojas Vatsyayan, Fremont
• Shiv Mehrotra-Varma, Fresno
• Grace Liang, Glendora
• Samhita Kumar, Gold River,
• Medina Miranda, Long Beach
• Hrishikesh Krishna, Manhattan Beach
• Paul Hamrick, Monterey
• Caitlin Higuchi, Mountain View
• Dean Alkhairy, Newport Coast
• Anabel Loucks, Piedmont
• Cody Nguyen, Placentia
• Nicholas Lee, Rancho Cucamonga
• Galen Cholbi, San Bernardino
• Kevin Luo, San Diego
• NingXin Sun, San Diego
• Isaiah Lanuza, San Francisco
• Amith Vasantha, San Jose
• Aswin Surya, San Jose
• Kedaar Rentachintala, San Jose
• Rishik Gandhasri, San Jose
• Sameer Tangirala, San Jose
• Ethan Anderson, San Marcos
• Leilani Campos, San Mateo
• Mark Salama, San Rafael
• Jayden Lee, San Ramon
• Sarah Yee, Rocklin
• Umar Aziz, Santa Ana,
• Nidhi Vadlamudi, Santa Clara
• Sahas Goli, Santa Clara
• Owen Mercer, Scotts Valley
• Rahul Naveen, Simi Valley
• Jaskarn Singh, Tulare
• Alisha Chakravarty, Turlock
• Aren Wang, Union City
• Ryan Uc, Van Nuys
• Ayle Guevarra, Winnetka
• Winston Zuo, Yorba Linda

Check back with Patch and we’ll keep you updated with how the Illinois spellers perform.

And if you’re curious about whether you have what it takes to compete in the Bee, you can take the preliminaries test to find out.

-Images via Mark Bowen/Scripps National Spelling Bee

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