Temecula Student Appears In National Spelling Bee 2022: How He Did

TEMECULA, CA — Three Riverside County spelling bee entrants made a play for the Scripps National Spelling Bee 2022 championship this week, but only one has advanced.

John Folsom, a seventh-grader from Van Avery Preparatory School in Temecula, misspelled gambol, a verb meaning to leap about playfully. He spelled it gambul.

Still, he did his hometown proud by attending and giving his all to this high-stress annual competition.

Lara Randhawa, 13 of Corona and 8th grader at Auburndale Intermediate School advanced with a correctly spelled 6th round word.

Profonde was the word that sent her to the next round of the bee. In case you were wondering what the word means, it's that secret pocket in the tail of a magician's coat.

She advanced to the 2022 quarterfinals by correctly spelling two words and correctly answering a multiple-choice word meaning question Tuesday.

Held at the Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center in National Harbor, Maryland, she began her play this week by correctly spelling realgar, a soft orange-red arsenic ore, used in pyrotechnics and tanning and as a pigment

It just gets harder from here for Lara Randhawa, who in the next round will have to answer a word-meaning question, which knocked her out of the 2021 quarterfinals.

The second round of each level of the competition — the preliminaries, quarterfinals, semifinals and finals — is a word meaning round, requiring the speller to orally select the correct multiple-choice answer to a vocabulary question read by the pronouncer.

In 2021, the bee added a "word meaning" question to their nerve-wracking contest in 2021 in an attempt to challenge the spellers and further advance the bee's focus on word knowledge and literacy.

This is not Lara's first attempt at becoming Riverside County's first National Spelling Bee champion.

It was the word meaning question that knocked her out in 2021. She was eliminated for incorrectly answering the meaning of the word "trousseau" in that year's quarterfinals

"What does a trousseau consist of?"

The correct choice was the clothes and other belongings of a bride.

"I knew how to spell the word trousseau but did not know the meaning and unfortunately picked the wrong choice," Lara told City News Service in a 2021 email interview. "Luck is a known part of the bee and I plan on working to improve my vocabulary."

Lara finished in a 16-way tie for 43rd in the 2021 bee.

In the second round, she correctly answered the multiple-choice word meaning question, "What is a catalyst?" selecting, "something that starts a process or change."

Lara correctly spelled proteiform, an adjective meaning changeable in form, in the third round.

Lara was among the 88 spellers from the original field of 234 competing in the quarterfinals.

The quarterfinals, semifinals and finals will be streamed live on the free platforms on the ION Plus and Bounce XL channels, which are available via free apps on Smart TVs (Samsung TV+ and Vizio Watchfree+) and other free apps (Roku Channel and Pluto TV) that can be accessed through Smart TVs and connected TV devices like Roku, Amazon Fire TV and Apple TV.

The semifinals are set to begin at approximately 1 p.m. Wednesday and the finals at 5 p.m. Thursday.

This is Lara's final national bee because it is limited to students in eighth grade or below.

Lara qualified for the 2022 national bee by winning the Riverside County Spelling Bee for the second consecutive year. She correctly spelled cumulocirrus, the name of a cloud.

Lara comes to the Spelling Bee as a legacy.

Her sister, Aisha Randhawa, won the county bees in 2016, 2017, 2018 and 2019 and tied for 15th in the 2019 national bee.

There were two other Riverside County spellers in the national bee Tuesday. They misspelled their first word and were eliminated.

Faith Zapata, a sixth-grader at Palm View Elementary School in Coachella, misspelled appurtenances, equipment used for a specific task or purpose. She spelled it aperdances.

John Folsom, a seventh-grader from Van Avery Preparatory School in Temecula, misspelled gambol, a verb meaning to leap about playfully. He spelled it gambul.

Congratulations to all for making it this far!

No speller from Riverside County has won the national bee.

City News Service Contributed To This Report.