San Ramon Student Wins Regional Spelling Bee, Advances To Nationals

SAN RAMON, CA — Can you spell “victory”? Three students, including one from Windemere Ranch Middle School, won the Scripps Regional Spelling Bee sponsored by the Rotary Club of San Ramon Valley. The students will advance to the 2023 Scripps National Spelling Bee, which will take place on May 31 and June 1 at the Gaylord National Resort & Convention Center in National Harbor, Maryland, near Washington, D.C.

The following students had to learn the spellings of 4,000 words, and beat out students from 210 schools across the Bay Area competing in three different levels:

• Dhruv Subramanian: Windemere Ranch Middle School
• Shradha Rachamreddy: BASIS Independent Silicon Valley Upper School
• Vikrant Chintanaboina: Discovery Charter School Falcon Campus

The three winners competed at the regional competition at the Amador Rancho Community Center in San Ramon on March 25, which was sponsored by the Rotary Club, JEI Learning Center, Valley Ventures Realty, Robert Half Talent Solutions, San Ramon Valley Community Interact Club, SMB Fitness and anonymous donors.

In addition to advancing to the semifinals, the winners receive:

• $1000 cash prize
• Rotary Club of San Ramon Regional Spelling Bee Trophy
• Rotary Club of San Ramon Valley Regional Spelling Bee Certificate
• The Samuel Louis Sugarman Award, a 2023 United States Mint proof set
• The Britannica Online Premium, a one-year subscription to Encyclopedia Britannica.
• A Merriam-Webster Unabridged Online one-year subscription

“This is a great event where the bright spellers showed off their mastery of not just spelling but how they would form the word based on its origin, how the word morphed over language boundaries, and how it is being used in current literature,” Sudha R. Ponnaganti, Youth Services Chair for the Rotary Club of San Ramon Valley, said in a statement. “The Rotary Club of San Ramon Valley is grateful that we can be a small part of the academic journey that these young minds will take in the future.”