| Ken Sah, Kunal Sah and Green River High School Principal Nolan Johnson after the spelling bee. |
Months of hard work has paid off for spelling champion Kunal Sah. Sah is a seventh grade student from Green River High School. He competed and won at the school, district and is now the region champ.
Along with this championship he will advance to Washington D.C. to compete in the National Spelling Bee on May 31-June 1. The district spelling bee consisted of students from Emery, Carbon, Grand and San Juan counties and was sponsored by the Emery County Progress and Sun Advocate newspapers and the Southeast Educational Service Center.
Three Emery County students participated including the champion Kunal Sah from Green River, Jaecee Bird from Cleveland and Marilyn Malan from Ferron.
The spelling bee was held at Green River High School. Five spelling activities were held beginning with the build a word competition, boggle competition, geo-spelling, paideia words and spelling rules and the main event spell down.
The words were provided by Scripps and no pre-study of the words was allowed. The commentator would ask the student a word and the student would repeat the word back and then spell the word. If a contestant missed a word, they were eliminated from the competition, but when the contestants were narrowed down to two; then the contestant has a chance to spell a missed word correctly and then if they do so they will also need to spell a word of their own correctly to win the competition.
The words weren’t easy and included: quadruped, journalism, academia, foreign, receipt, musician, condition, suspicion, physician, inertia, duodenum, ganglion, delicious, partial, endocrine, vacuum and many others.
Kira Simpson from San Juan and Kunal Sah were the last two spellers. Kira misspelled the work-calefactory and Kunal spelled it correctly. He was then given the word impeccable which he spelled correctly to win the competition and the trip to Washington, D.C.
“I feel really good about this competition. I practice two-three hours each day and my Dad tests me about once a week. The competition in Washington is May 31-June 1,” said Sah.
Simpson said, “I don’t like studying that much so I’m glad Kunal is going.”
Eli Beck from San Juan finished third in the competition.
The prizes were awarded with each contestant placing in an event and receiving an award. Also competing were: Edwin Juan from Montezuma Creek, Destiny Brasher, Sally Mauro, Shylie Richardson, Helper Jr. High, Albert Jeffs, Sally Mauro and from Grand, Kamron Call, Brooklyn Richards and Delaney Roberts.
Kunal is the son of Kanhai (Ken) and Sarita Sah of Green River.