Follow San Ramon Teen in National Spelling Bee!

SAN RAMON, CA - Ponvarshini Ravi, 14, of San Ramon is among 285 who will attempt to spell words that most of us have never heard as she competes in the 2016 Scripps National Spelling Bee, which gets under way Tuesday in National Harbor, MD, and continues through Thursday.

She attends Iron Horse Middle School. According to her official Spelling Bee profile, "Varsha loves music and plays the clarinet and the violin. She also enjoys listening to music, especially songs by her favorite musicians, Lindsey Stirling and Panic! At The Disco. Varsha is an avid reader and also writes novels in her free time. She is currently revising her third novel and hopes to finish it soon. Varsha is very interested in other countries' cultures, and she would like to travel broadly. She would most like to visit Rome to explore the historical architecture. In the future, Varsha hopes to attend Stanford University and pursue a career in the STEM field."

The spellers are among the best of the best, ranking among the top 0.000026 percent of the more than 11 million students who participated in local events.

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They come from all 50 states and the District of Columbia, American Samoa, Guam, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands and Department of Defense Schools in Europe. Eleven spellers represent the Bahamas, Canada, Ghana, Jamaica, Japan and South Korea.

Where, When to Watch on TV

ESPN and its channels will broadcast coverage of the Bee for the 23rd consecutive year with Bee hosts Kevin Negandhi, Paul Loeffler and Kaylee Hartung.

Spellers will be on the stage for the first time on Wednesday, May 25, after Tuesday’s preliminary round.

Here’s the schedule (all times Pacific Daylight Time, all broadcasts are live):

Wednesday

• 5 - 8:45 a.m.: Preliminaries (ESPN3)
• 10:15 a.m. - 1:45 p.m: Preliminaries, announcement of finalists (ESPN3)

Thursday

• 7 - 11 a.m.: Finals (ESPN2)
• 5 - 7 p.m.: Finals (ESPN)

Social Media

Also, follow the behind-the-scenes action on social media. The Scripps National Spelling Bee is a two-time winner of the Nielsen weekly Twitter TV ratings for the last week in May.

On the Web

More about the spelling bee, including profiles of each speller and round results and regular competition updates is found at spellingbee.com. The website also has an archive of past winners and their winning words, a sample test and other information.

Image via Scripps National Spelling Bee; Patch editor Beth Dalbey contributed to this report