National Spell Bee champion wins city round

HYDERABAD: Kavya Muralidhar, a class X student of Kondapur's Chirec Public School, won the HDFC Life Spell Bee, India Spells 2012, powered by The Times of India in association with Horlicks, for the second time in as many years on Monday. Kavya had won the title of Spell Bee national champion, in 2011 while representing the city.
This year again, she will represent Hyderabad at the national finals in Mumbai, where her competition will be the winners from 31 other cities.Kavya said that she started developing an interest in Spell Bee in sixth grade. "Though I participated in the contest four years ago, I did not qualify and was very upset. But I refused to give up and hard work helped me win the title last year," said Kavya.
Soon to be an intermediate student, Kavya said that this was the last time she got to participate in the contest as she would have crossed the 15-year age limit next year.
She said that what had got her interested in spelling was perhaps her love for books. "I got interested in Spell Bee after I watched the Hollywood movie, Akeelah and the Bee, about a young girl who tries to make it to the Spell Bee in the US.
"But my love for books did help me like words more. My vocabulary has also improved over the four years in which I have participated in the contest," Kavya said, revealing that her ambition was to become a research scientist or a writer.
Kavya was accompanied by her mother, Mallika Muralidhar, who said that the contest was designed to help students develop confidence. "This is a platform for students to be productive and, over the last four years, I have seen that the number of participants has increased," she said.
A total of 437 students from 50 city-based schools took part in the contest, which was held this year at Basheerbagh's Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan.
Finishing first runner-up was Vivek Iyer from Puppalaguda's Future Kids School who was just seven points behind Kavya. "I will come back next year to compete again. Perhaps, I will win the title, if I tried really hard. I will be better prepared next year," Vivek said.
On Saturday, all participants had to go through a preliminary hour-long first round, which threw up 10 students who were to compete for the title. The competition between Kavya and Vivek was neck and neck till the third round but the final rapid fire decided the issue in favour of Kavya who scored 34 points against Vivek's 28. The winner along of the national title will get a chance to witness the Scripps National Spelling Bee in Washington DC along with a parent.