Tampa Boy Competes In 2016 Scripps National Spelling Bee

TAMPA, FL -- One Tampa Bay area speller is among 285 who will be attempting to spell harder words as they compete for a bigger cache of prizes in the 2016 Scripps National Spelling Bee, which gets under way Tuesday in National Harbor, Md., and continues through Thursday.

The spellers are among the best of the best, ranking among the top 0.000026 percent of the more than 11 million students who participated in local events.

They come from all 50 states and the District of Columbia, American Samoa, Guam, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands and Department of Defense Schools in Europe. Eleven spellers represent the Bahamas, Canada, Ghana, Jamaica, Japan and South Korea.

Tampa's speller is Ammaar Mohammed, 12, a seventh-grader at the Bayaan Academy in New Tampa.

According to Mohammed's Scripps' profile, he would like to attend the University of Texas at Austin to earn a computer engineering degree. He also dreams of a future in professional soccer.

"For now, Ammaar sticks to dominating the field at his local Chargers Soccer Club games," his profile says. "He also loves to read books, with his favorites being the Seeds of America series by Laurie Halse Anderson and the Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling. Ammaar's ultimate goal is to land a job at Microsoft."

Where, When to Watch on TV

ESPN and its channels will broadcast coverage of the Bee for the 23rd consecutive year with Bee hosts Kevin Negandhi, Paul Loeffler and Kaylee Hartung.

Spellers will be on the stage for the first time on Wednesday, May 25, after Tuesday’s preliminary round.

Here’s the schedule (all times Eastern Daylight Time, all broadcasts are live):

Wednesday

• 8-11:45 a.m.: Preliminaries (ESPN3)
• 1:15-4:45 p.m: Preliminaries, announcement of finalists (ESPN3)

Thursday

• 10 a.m. -2 p.m.: Finals (ESPN2)
• 8-10 p.m.: Finals (ESPN)

Social Media

Also, follow the behind-the-scenes action on social media. The Scripps National Spelling Bee is a two-time winner of the Nielsen weekly Twitter TV ratings for the last week in May.

On the Web

More about the spelling bee, including profiles of each speller and round results and regular competition updates is found at spellingbee.com. The website also has an archive of past winners and their winning words, a sample test and other information.

Photo: Mark Bowen/Scripps National Spelling Bee

Patch editor Beth Dalby contributed to this report.