San Ramon Student Competes In Scripps National Spelling Bee Finals

SAN RAMON, CA — A San Ramon student, and three students sponsored by the San Ramon Valley Rotary Club, will compete in the prestigious Scripps National Spelling Bee Thursday evening. The competition was formed in 1925 as a consolidation of several local spelling bees, and is the nation’s largest and longest-running competitions. The three finalists are as follows:

• Dhruv Subramanian, age 12, grade 7, Windemere Ranch Middle School
• Vikrant Chintanaboina, age 14, grade 8, BASIS Independent Silicon Valley Upper School
• Shradha Rachamreddy, age 13, grade 7, Discovery Charter School Falcon Campus

The three students have been at the Gaylord National Resort & Convention Center in National Harbor, Maryland, near Washington, D.C. since Tuesday competing against 228 other students from around the world.

They made it through the preliminary round on Tuesday, the quarterfinals and semifinals on Wednesday, and were just 3 out of 11 students to compete in the finals Thursday.

To make it this far, they beat out students from 210 schools to win the Scripps Regional Spelling Bee in March in San Ramon in March, where they had to learn the spellings of over 4000 different words, and won $1000 each, in addition to other prizes.

If any of them win tonight, they could walk home with a $50,000 prize, a championship trophy, and a whole slew of other prizes.

Subramanian has been preparing for a long time. He started competing in the North South Foundation Junior Spelling Bee in kindergarten, just one of two in his grade to compete nationally, according to a profile in Danville-San Ramon. He scored 21st place nationally in first grade, 11th place in second grade, and first place in third grade.

The finals will air Thursday from 5 to 7 p.m. PT on the ION and Bounce channels. You can also enter your zip code here to find out how to watch. They will also re-air on Scripps News on Friday at 6 p.m. PT and Saturday at 5 p.m. PT.