By Michael Morton
Snigdha, 14, will finish eighth grade this year and no longer be eligible.
“It's an air of excitement,” she said of the event, which will be held during Bee Week from May 30 to June 5 in Washington, D.C. and which normally features a free trip for contestants as well as one parent and parties and tours once they arrive.
Snigdha qualified by winning the second of two heats during a citywide bee held March 23 and March 24 to determine which pair of students would go on to nationals.
The winner of the first heat, Erik Zyman Carrasco of Manhattan's Booker T. Washington school, is no stranger to Snigdha. The two first squared off as fifth-graders in the same citywide heat, with Snigdha gaining her first trip to Washington after they were the last two standing.
Few competitors or their parents anticipated such big things from the unknown youngsters.
“We were fifth-graders. We were nobodies,” Snigdha said. “It's a good thing to be the underdog. People don't expect the potential.”
Erik eventually misspelled “febrility,” meaning “feverish,” and Snigdha moved on to the national competition, where she joined fewer than 10 other fifth-graders. She finished 35th out of 248 spellers and made it into the fourth round, just barely missing an appearance on ESPN, which broadcast the later part of the contest.
The next year Snigdha, now a well-known competitor, only managed a second-place finish at her school, MS 172, and did not advance to the city contest because of the word “fuselage.”
Of her runner-up status, Snigdha said “that really gets to you. Wow, that was close.”
Erik advanced to nationals that year and placed in the top 10, Snigdha said.
When they were seventh-graders, Snigdha and Erik went head-to-head in the same heat again on the city level. Snigdha lost with aplomb.
“I did a-p-p-l-o-m-b,” she said.
She did not recall Erik's winning word but remembered, “I could spell that – that's all that ran through my head.”
Erik once again went to nationals, though Snigdha could not remember how he fared.
Though she does not call the boy wonder her rival, Snigdha admitted that something was missing this year since the pair were in different heats and did not face each other.
“It kind of ruined the air of the spelling bee,” she said.
Still, there was the lure of Washington. Between appearances on the networks' national morning shows, Snigdha is preparing by studying the official word list for two hours a day and listening to the pronunciations at the bee's Web site. She wants to make it beyond the fourth round.
“I have to make the best of it,” Sur said. “I'm going to appreciate this more.”
Next fall she is off to Stuyvesant High School in Manhattan with Erik, who also will no longer be eligible for the bee.
Of the new blood that will take over their roles, she said, “it's going to be interesting to see who will be coming.”
Reach reporter Michael Morton by e-mail at news@timesledger.com or by calling 718-229-0300, Ext. 154.
