This is sick. Out of the 41 semifinalists left standing today, 15 of the are Indian Americans. The Kenyans have running. The Cubans, baseball. The Chinese, ping-pong. Indian Americans own spelling.
It was a moment to savor. Of the record 293 participants at 82nd Scripps National Spelling Bee, only 41 moved on to the nationally televised semifinals that start Thursday morning (10 a.m. ET, ESPN)…Expected to be in that final group are several returning favorites. Fourteen-year-old Keiko Bridwell of Duncan, S.C., back for the fourth time after tying for 17th last year, had no problem with “swivel” and “mahout” (one who keeps or drives elephants) in her oral rounds and breezed into the semifinals.
Is it easier now because she’s a veteran?
“More pressure,” Keiko said. “Everybody wants me to do better.”… [Link]
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p>When ESPN calls you the Spelling Bee favorite it is just like putting an NFL player on the cover of a Madden game. You are probably cursed. Therefore, based on my own intensive scouting I offer up the following thoughts for those people who have bookies in Vegas and want to bet on these young horses. Word of advice: always bet on brown.
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p>The first one I want you to keep an eye on is Vaibhav S. Vavilala from Indiana. Double V as he is known on the circuit is a 4 time competitor. Experience helps, but it can also prove to be a mental block because you can better visualize past failure.
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The next contestant I want you to watch for is Kavya “The Destroyer” Shivashankar. Like Double V above she is a four time veteran. According to her profile the thirteen year old looks forward to becoming a neurosurgeon. The Kavyas we know stop at nothing when the smell of success is in the air.
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My next pick is thirteen year old semifinalist Aishwarya Eshwar Pastapur. She cites aviator Amelia Earhart as her role model so she has a good head on her shoulders. I see her going far this year.
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My final pick is a dark horse long shot. He is a 9 year old speller who reminds me of a petulant 18-year-old Boris Becker. His name is Sriram Hathwar:
Sriram has studied piano for five years and enjoys learning to play new hymns and prayer songs. He likes to swim, ice-skate, ski, and play basketball. In his spare time Sriram may be found reading books in the Harry Potter series or watching Tiger Woods on the putting green. Sriram participated in the 2008 national finals, when he was the youngest contestant in the history of the event. [Link]
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Game on. Will you all be watching tomorrow night?
Somehow this article made me feel disapointed in myself. Like I’m not living up the ABCD dream like I’m supposed to. And I’m starting med school in August.=/
I don’t think of myself as hyper-competitive. Did anyone else have the same reaction?
What about the hometown boy, Shantanu Srivatsa from North Dakota?
He was one among the 17 other desis that didn’t make it to the top 41.
are you serious? we should be proud of this?
good job at rote memorization indians, im so incredibly proud of you
i hope the patel dude wins
Damn! I missed this one. Do they have a contest in the 25-30 year category i could go win?
According to this story, Kavya is not alone among the contestants in wanting to be a neurosurgeon. I wonder if they also look up to CNN’s Sanjay Gupta in addition to the previous spelling bee winners. 🙂
Vaibhav S Vavilala sounds like a 4 Vheel drive.
“good job at rote memorization indians”
Hardly – instead, the students, not just Indians, have to learn the spelling rules of different language systems – Greek, Latin, German, French, etc. – and then apply those rules to the words. Simply memorizing a dictionary is not enough.
BTW – there was an episode of The King of Queens, when Deacon enters the room and asks Doug what he’s watching, he replies with excitement, “The Spelling Bee. There is an Indian kid with a lisp who’s kicking ass!”
There’s only room for one Double V, kid! [attempts to look menacing]
Will they be checked for performance enhancing drugs ?
It’s the curry.
And Kavya is given the word “Kurta” to spell. Thankfully she got it.
There’s no such thing as correct transliteration!
Dude, this makes me so unbelievably happy.
They just announced the 11 finalists — 7 of which are brown. Expect a sweep this year.
That’s premature.
I am kind of embarressed(spelling) that so many Indians are in this thing.
7 out of the final 11? 7-11? They are fuc#ing with us.
If you go espn.com you can see a video of a lady laughing while she calls one Indian kid “That kid with the mustache”
It is hilarious. Another contest that Indians would dominate….
Giving the best mustache rides.
Maybe the disproportionate number of Indians has something to do with some of their ancestors having to memorize copious volumes of Sanskrit text for a few thousand years? I am not an evolutionary biologist, but it must confer some advantage, no?
IF you read their profiles, they are all sterotypes.. doing the same stuffs like plays piano, violin, math competition etc…don’t desi’s have anything else fun to do in life?
UFC this is not. Another case of where even if you win, you still lose.
i’m sure you are riding the rails and being a gangsta you anonymous goober, to make up for the rest of us. leave us be to stew in our m-u-l-l-i-g-a-t-a-w-n-y soop.
Maybe the disproportionate number of Indians has something to do with some of their ancestors having to memorize copious volumes of Sanskrit text for a few thousand years?
LOL!
Only if we killed or sterilized the ones who were bad at it.
Manpreet – that is very kaavya-ish of you 😉
Sulabh – That is where I got it from 🙂
There was a time in history when all cultures kept their classics and religious texts by human memory. Just like now all cultures keep their texts electronically.
Tennis, bharatanatyam and speech and debate. I was in high school almost 20 years ago and nothing has changed.
7 out of 11? You wouldn’t know that from ABC’s opening sequence.
Watching this now – some of these kids are so scared and nervous !
170 was pretty exuberant though. And it’s on ABC….as in ABCD ?
I know, very bad – but the 7-11 thing is pretty ridiculous.
Wonder if any kids pass out this time. The first names are pretty interesting though, they all seem unique. Half of the 7 are South Indian too I believe. I wonder if the parents all went out for a big Indian dinner before.
Seems to be turning into a great place for the parents to be finding potential marriage candidates for their kids !! “Oooh – look at that Vikram boy, he and Neelam both enunciate so well – their children would have no problem with massively multi-syllabic words”.
apodytrerium – is the word that got siddarth chand bounced from the bee, and bought tears to his eyes.
Liveblogging not working on the other post. Couldn’t post there either.
Maybe they should have the non-brown kids try and spell the full names of the Indian kids.
Anyone notice that one of the white girls had a longer name than the Indians ? Found that funny.
Still think some marriages will get hashed out backstage 🙂
Is it just me, or is ABC trying to screw this up on purpose? The constant yakking, interviewing Dancing with Stars winners, and as many commercials you can fit. How do you take an exciting straightforward competition – and over-produced it to the extent ABC has?
They should have someone like Jesse Ventura or Mean Gene Okerlund do the announcing.
It is very amusing to hear narration during a very academic process, like chess.
But it’s TV – they probably had to find more than normal advertisers for a program like this.
Enough with the food words. I’m hungry!
Kavya wins it !! Good picks Abhi.
Anyone have any money on her ? Would have been great if she co-won with her friend Aishwarya.
kavya won! yay! fourth’s time’s a charm! 🙂
as soon as she heard the word, she smiled just so slightly, and i exhaled. YeA KaVYa!!
And not even an interview with Kavya, so they can air a Gray’s Anatomy rerun? I never thought I would hate TV. The kids were fine, but once again, adults messed it up.
Kavya, shmavya. What about her kid sister? She was awesome.
NERDS!!!!!
Self-deprecate much?
This would not have happened if that home-school-white-kid had won. This girl’s success is so awesome, she ‘knew’ the last word and had tears in her eyes even before she started spelling it. Way better TV than a re-run.
This was her 3rd or 4th appearance – kudos to her.
K – A – V – Y – A this is how you spell tenacious.
Considering that Razib is a hardcore analytics and statistics geek, I am sure he was being sarcastic.
Although, most of the Indian parents did look like engineers. Would have been cool to see a biker dad.
Big congrats to Kavya though – can’t be easy with the kids behind you, parents on stage, and millions watching.
I agree with the interview comment – they were interviewing gymnastics winners, and other kids who lost, yet couldn’t spare a minute for the winner ? Next time, let’s have PBS have a crack at it.
Simple recipe to make winners. Blinker the kids and you shall have it. These kids are pretty sharp and go on to have interesting careers. As for the neurosurgeon bit, what do you think they’d aspire for instead? Investment banking? Corporate management? Obviously they don’t simply memorise the spellings, they work with some rules related to etymology, pronunciation etc., It’s pretty clear that these kids don’t get to see much daylight, excepting for these outings! And BTW did you see the 2nd Lady of the US, Dr. Jill Biden in the audience? Wow, she always reminds me of every woman I have known, who does her best managing multiple roles. She always looks like she’s just ad enough time to finish making the dinner, cleaning up, setting out the table, before a dash to her wardrobe, and then out at the event – not to forget remembering to take a pacifier to pop into her husband’s mouth before he can gab away! Wonder what the VP will say this time, “You can’t step into a Dunkin Donuts in Delaware without being called out on your spelling!” or some such thing! I absolutely enjoyed his earlier remark about the Indian accent in Delaware!
It used to be carried on ESPN, which did a good job with it. Execs at Disney then moved it to ABC, thinking it would get a bigger audience, which it did for the previous 2 years. And those previous ABC airings were fine – but this year was just a mess.
So – considering the Slumdog effect some have experienced – will this add to the ‘positive minority’ stereotype that Eastern and Southern Asians experience ?
Will we now have co-workers and strangers asking us for help with their crossword puzzles or to embiggen their emails with big words to help make them more cromulent ?
Some of the kids seemed well rounded personality wise. Still can’t get over the moustaches – even Aishwarya’s dad grew one for the occasion (was missing from their video clip).
The interview thing is troubling the more I think about it – that many brown kids and no follow up time during or after with them. Worse than Seacrest with the Slumdog kids at the Oscars.
I honestly wonder if some of the Spelling Bee execs or ABC execs will honestly have meetings or discussions on how to get more non-brown kids into the next one.
They might put an essay contest before the spelling rounds. Make it more subjective. I am pretty sure they are thinking about it. Putting 6-7 brown kids out of a group of 11 on TV during primetime TV would not work.
Like some one said this contest should go back to PBS.
kansas NERD in the hiz house!