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player ready...Atman Balakrishnan was back at it Thursday morning after learning the previous day that he had not qualified for the finals of the Scripps National Spelling Bee in National Harbor, Maryland.
The Hinsdale Middle School sixth-grader and son of a previous National Spelling Bee champion, correctly spelled the two words he was given in rounds 2 and 3 of the competition Tuesday and Wednesday. However, his score on a written spelling and vocabulary test, taken as part of the first round by all competitors, left him short of being one of the 41 spellers to advance to Thursday’s finals.
The bee had 519 spellers participating in rounds one and two, and 452 take part in round three.
“I already studied this morning,” Atman said Thursday morning. “This was a very valuable experience for me, and I really want to come back again and try to win.”
Atman struggled more with vocabulary than with spelling on the written test.
“I’m going to put in more time studying for next year, and I know I have to study more out-of-the-box words,” he said.
Atman correctly spelled cantico in round two and vitascope in round three.
He said he wasn’t overly disappointed by not making it to the finals.
“I tried to take it in a good way,” he said. “It’s been a great experience, spelling, and meeting a lot of brilliant people.”
Atman was a media darling the moment he arrived at the spelling bee with his father, Balu Natarajan, who was the 1985 national champion.
“A lot of people wanted to interview us, but that didn’t really put any pressure on me,” Atman said.
While Atman spelled his two onstage words correctly, two spellers from St. John of the Cross school in Western Springs didn’t fare quite as well.
Ethan Ayersman of Chicago correctly spelled taqueria in the second round, but was eliminated in the third round when he misspelled friezing.
Ryan Nelson of Western Springs misspelled dioecious in the second round.