On Dec. 1, I spent my school day in my school gym, waiting on the bleachers with 27 people and once in a while being called up to the microphone to spell a word. It was my school level spelling bee, and after being given the word, ‘fonda,” which in simple terms is an inn, I became one of the two BASIS Oro Valley School Spelling Bee Champions. Ela Adhikari, an 8th grader, was the other champion.

With excitement and determination, I proceeded on to the next level, the BASIS District Spelling Bee, on Jan. 26. There were eight spellers in all from BASIS Tucson and my school, BASIS Oro Valley. The difficulty of the words increased, but with the word, “malapropism,” (according to Merriam Webster, the usually unintentionally humorous misuse or distortion of a word or phrase) I became the 2022 BASIS District Spelling Bee Champion, with Ela as the Alternate and Runner-up.

I continued my journey to the Pima County 2022 Spelling Bee, representing BASIS District and competing with 29 other spellers from districts all across the county. It was a good competition this year. In the last few rounds of the competition, with three spellers left, we fought hard. In these rounds, the remaining three spellers, including myself, were able to get words incorrect, but the elimination rules changed, and it was possible the spellers could come back into the Bee if any of the three got a word incorrect. I was honored to win third place at the 2022 Pima County Spelling Bee, becoming the Alternate if the other two winners were not able to proceed onto the next bee. Eighth-grader Lewis Harvey from Continental Elementary won first place and Kian Huff from Cross Middle School was the runner-up.

 All three of us received a trophy and a gift bag, and we stood proud on the stage as we made it this far, already winners from our school and district level. The first two will continue on to the state level on March 19.

In preparation, I studied my word list called “Words of the Champions” and mainly Latin and Greek roots from a book called “Words of Wisdom.” I studied parts of Spanish, Italian, German and other languages to get some rules and patterns in my mind. Nervousness was one huge factor that I learned to overcome on the stage. By the time I reached the county level, I was not nervous on stage. If I accomplished this much with the work I did, I could use this as motivation to continue on to science fairs, math competitions and anything I feel passionate about. I was lucky to participate in some of my spelling bee journey with my friend Ela.

The Pima County 2022 Spelling Bee was held at Canyon Del Oro High School. The event was live streamed on Facebook by Pima County, and the video is still up to watch. All spellers worked very hard.