Fairfax County Teen's Spelling Passion Leads To National Stage

HERNDON, VA — Like anyone else her age, Akshita Balaji has grown accustomed to life in front of a screen. Having spent the entirety of the past school year learning on a fully remote basis, the recent Rachel Carson Middle School graduate has adjusted to everything life in the midst of a global pandemic could throw at her over the past 16 months.

But through all of the changes, the 14-year-old Merrifield resident has mastered a lot — including remaining a champion speller.

Akshita became the first Fairfax County student in more than a decade to qualify for the Scripps National Spelling Bee semifinals. After winning both her school spelling bee and the county spelling championship for the third consecutive year, Akshita reached the national stage she had dreamed of since the first time she watched the competition on ESPN as a fourth grader.

Because of continued pandemic-related restrictions, this year’s Scripps competition was held virtually. Rather than be surrounded by her fellow 29 competitors, Akshita participated in the national event from the comfort of her own home on a screen —much in the same way as she had since the coronavirus pandemic began last March. While one would guess familiar surroundings would provide a bit of a home-field advantage, Akshita says for her, the opposite was true.

“In-person (competitions) relieves the stress a bit because you do have your fellow spellers and competitors who know exactly what you’re going through around you,” she told Patch in a Zoom interview on Thursday.

She added: “It was really exhilarating, and it felt good to be on that stage in front of everybody and show off what I’ve been working for.”

The competition, which has been nearly every year since 1925, was canceled last year due to the coronavirus pandemic. It marked only the fourth time the spelling bee was not held, with World War II (1943-45) being the other exception.

After capturing another Fairfax County championship, Akshita moved on to join 208 fellow spellers at the national level. As a sixth grader, she finished 51st nationally. But in her final year of eligibility for the Scripps competition, Akshita advanced to the round of 30 semifinalists.

The competition was eventually whittled down to the final 11 spellers, who will compete for the national crown later this month.

Akshita, who won her first spelling bee as a third grader in India, tried to treat the national semifinals like any other competition — although she knew the stakes were much different. Regardless of what level she is spelling at, Akshita considers the rules that spelling present, the origin and roots of the word, and then types the word out to create muscle memory of how a word is spelled correctly.

Her parents said in a feature story written by the Fairfax County Schools Office of Communication and Community Relations that they have been drilling Akshita out of a dictionary when she won her first elementary school title in Herndon in the fourth grade. While her parents never expected their daughter to reach the national level she has, they have cheered her on ever since.

Akshita, meanwhile, tried to remain calm heading into the Scripps semifinals.

“I definitely had some expectations, but I wanted to go into (the competition) with a clean mind so I don’t get disappointed,” she said Thursday.

From the first time she saw the Scripps competition on television, everything about it jumped out to Akshita. From the lights to the stage, the crowd, and the way she said all of the competitors appeared so poised “like they know exactly what they were doing” — she knew as a fourth grader that the national level was where she wanted to be.

Her parents did everything they could to prepare her, Akshita's father, Balaji Kannan, said. Between trying to give her words that they felt like could be included at higher-profile competitions, Akshita's parents kept encouraging her to expand her vocabulary as much as possible.

“My wife and I will pick out words that are in the news, like xenophobia, making sure she can both spell it and identify the correct meaning,” Kannan said in the district feature story. “In spelling bees, you have to know what words mean too and in a dictionary a word can have three or four separately-listed meanings — sometimes they ask a question that pertains to the second meaning so you really need to know them all.”

Last weekend, without having the luxury of an in-person competition in which she would be face-to-face with the person announcing the words, Akshita relied instead on methods that have been successful in the past. Without a live audience, Akshita said she attempted to stay in the moment by keeping things as basic as possible.

Her secret is not as complicated as one might believe.

“Whenever you get a word, your focus should be only on that word and how to spell that word right — not on ‘what if I spell the word right, what are people going to think of me?,’” she said. “The focus should just be on getting that word right.”

Like she had throughout her preparation, Akshita prepared herself for every spelling scenario and ran through all of the rules and the exceptions to those rules. There are certain words that spellers have to memorize, she said, because there’s no way they can be guessed correctly once on stage.

Ultimately, the word that Akshita missed on (foveiform) is spelled the way that followed the rules rather than following the exception she thought that might apply. She said that she went back and forth between the two possible ways the word could be spelled, but chose incorrectly.

While there will be other spelling bee competitions she has planned for this summer, Akshita feels like she made the most of her chance of reaching what had been a goal for much of her childhood. Asked how many words she believes she can spell, Akshita smiled and was unable to venture a guess despite owning what she calls a pretty good-sized vocabulary.

“This year was my last year (to qualify for Scripps) and so I really wanted to give it my best shot,” Akshita said Thursday. “I think I did that.”

The fact she is one of the 21 top spellers in the United States for her age is something that has sunk in over the past few days, Akshita said. Although her Scripps run may have ended before she hoped it would, the rising high school freshman wants her journey to provide a lesson to others who may have similar aspirations.

“You have to have a lot of passion about words, and it’s not going to work if you’re doing it because you’re forced or someone is making you do it," she said. "It’s only going to work if you have a lot of passion and if you have the drive. If you work hard, it’s definitely achievable.”