Smriti Parajuli has competed in the Yuma County Spelling Bee for four years in a row, and this Monday, her hard work paid off when she successfully spelled "concordance."
On Feb. 9, the Centennial Middle School 8th grader took home first place at the spelling bee, followed by Jacius Skinner of Fourth Avenue Junior High, 8th grade, and Christian Hernandez of Desert View Elementary, 6th grade. They competed against 51 other 2nd - 8th grade students representing public and private schools in Yuma County.
“I won at my school before and I hope maybe this year, I can actually, like, go to nationals in May,” Parajuli said.
Despite thinking she would forget all the words she studied, Parajuli made it all the way to the end in a competition that included words like “grandiloquent,” “serendipitous,” “tenurial” and “scribblative.”
Of the words she had to spell, Parajuli thought “mordant” was the most difficult.
“I thought I was going to spell it with an E instead of an A,” she admitted.
Jacius Skinner, who earned second place, shared that he found “rapscallion” a little challenging.
“When they told me ‘rapscallion,’ I originally thought it was ‘W-R-A-P,’ but then when I asked for a definition, I heard [the pronouncer] say ‘rascal’ and then I immediately knew it was ‘R-A-P’ instead.”
Skinner told KAWC that this was his first spelling bee, and he only studied for “30 minutes, and they said none of the words I studied for! I knew, like, none of the words they told me.”
He has an affinity for coding, but he also finds that spelling comes easily to him.
Parajuli, on the other hand, is really favoring English Language Arts right now, and in prepping for this competition, she studied hard.
“This is her last year to participate,” her mother, Binita Parajuli, said. “She's in eighth grade, so she was really serious. She was reading all the time, do her homework, everything, schedule everything, and then do the spelling bee after she got into the school, you know, like a finalist. And then she was working really hard.”
Smriti hopes to make it all the way to the Scripps National Spelling Bee in Washington D.C. this May, but before she can do that, she’ll need to win the Arizona Spelling Bee in March. She plans to study harder.
“Now, maybe like two to four hours a day, I hope, you know, I can see other people from the other counties and hopefully maybe we can actually go to the Scripps National Spelling Bee,” Parajuli said.
Nancy Blitz, who has been the county spelling bee pronouncer for several years, was impressed by Parajuli’s persistence and the fact there was a 2nd grader in this year’s competition.
“I could not believe we had a second grader. I think this is the first year that we've had a second grader,” she said. “And my hat is off to Miss Smriti because this is her fourth year to compete and she stayed the course and she's going to just knock their socks off at state.”
Smriti, who was standing nearby, added, “and maybe even, you know, maybe even if I make it to nationals, also knock their socks off.”
“Oh, that would be great!” Blitz replied.
Parajuli will be headed to Phoenix to compete in the Arizona Spelling Bee next month on Saturday, March 21. She’ll be facing off against 27 other students from each of Arizona’s counties.
This reporting is supported by a grant from the Arizona Local News Foundation.
