SPRING VALLEY (CNS) – A 12-year-old student who completed seventh grade at the Santa Sophia Academy in Spring Valley this month is one of the 209 contestants in the 2021 Scripps National Spelling Contest, which began on Saturday with Virtual mode begins.

Christian Antonio won the San Diego Union Tribune county-wide spelling contest held through Zoom on March 17th to qualify for the National Bee. He spelled huipil correctly-a dress worn in Mexico and Central America-and won 37 spelling competitions.

Christian is the top player on his tennis team. His hobbies include drawing digital art, quickly solving different kinds of Rubik’s Cubes and playing guitar.

Christian likes to travel the world. He has been to 17 countries.

Starting from kindergarten, Christian has won the school’s annual poetry/speech competition every year.

San Diego County has produced two national spelling contest champions-Anurag Kashyap in 2005 and Snigdha Nandipati in 2012.

Saturday’s preliminaries consist of three rounds of oral competition.

In the first round, the speller is asked to spell a word. If they spell it correctly, they will immediately participate in the second round of the competition and answer a multiple-choice question on the meaning of the word.

If they answered correctly, they will be asked to spell another word.

The speller who answers all three questions correctly will enter the quarter-finals on Tuesday.

The preliminaries will be televised by streaming service ESPN3 from 7 am to 3:30 pm Pacific time.

All matches in the semi-finals will be played on a virtual basis. The top 10-12 finalists will travel to ESPN Integrated Sports World in Belek, Florida to participate in the finals that will be held on July 8.

Bees are limited to students in eighth grade or below on August 31, 2020. The age of the contestants ranges from 9 to 15 years old.

The field consists of spellers from all 50 states and the District of Columbia, as well as Guam, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and the European Department of Defense schools.

Four foreign countries are also represented-Bahamas, Canada, Ghana and Japan.

The winner will receive $50,000, a commemorative medal and the Scripps Cup, the official championship trophy of the Scripps National Scrabble Contest, provided by Scripps, which owns television, cable and radio networks.

The winner will also receive US$2,500 and a full reference library from dictionary publisher Merriam-Webster; reference works of Encyclopedia Britannica worth US$400, including a copy of the encyclopedia from 1768, and a three-year online membership.

The coronavirus pandemic prompted the organizers to make some changes to the bees, in addition to holding competitions on a virtual basis through the semifinals, and abandoning the multiple choice test containing 12 spelling words and 14 vocabulary questions

Developed a proprietary online testing platform to provide educators and other project sponsors with an alternative and easily accessible mechanism to manage local-level bee testing, thereby providing greater participation while complying with local pandemic response requirements flexibility.

The organizer also provides guidance to schools and sponsors that conduct video conference spelling contests.

Bee has signed a contract with a technology supplier to create a level playing field and competition space, so that each country’s final spellers have the same virtual experience.

The supplier also provided tracking information to the bees to maintain the integrity of the game.

In order to replicate the comrades of the Bee among the spellers and make sure that the spellers and family feel that they have designed a virtual program suite during the Bee Week organizers, which has a space to connect and celebrate their achievements.

Virtual events for spellers and families include virtual kick-off parties, including family scavenger hunts and dance parties, and a virtual opening ceremony broadcast live on Facebook and YouTube on Friday.

This field is down 62.8% from the record field 562 when the bee was last held in 2019, mainly due to the decline of the RSVBee program, which gives students living in areas that do not sponsor regional competitions the opportunity to follow the spelling in competitive areas One of the spellers was declared the winner of thousands of schools.

The program was first provided for the 2018 bee. The champion of the year, Karthik Nemmani of McKinney, Texas, was a participant of RSVBee.

It has not yet been decided whether the plan will return in 2022, because “bees focus on the 2021 game and create a fun and memorable experience for this year’s 209 finalists,” Scripps’ external manager Becca Cochran McCarter Communications, told City News Agency.

“Scripps National Spelling Bee has been evaluating its plan to ensure it provides the best experience for everyone and the greatest opportunity for spellers around the world,” said Cochran McCarter.

Copyright 2021, City News Service, Inc.