1-30-2024 6:49pm

Dhruv Rakhade emerged as the Middle School's Spelling Bee champion

Donnella Tilery Editor

The spell check tool on computers has serious competition.

Competition comes in the form of 22 students from the Bridgewater-Raritan Middle School.

These 7th and 8th Graders advanced from a field of 80 participants to compete in the Bridgewater-Raritan Middle School’s championship round of the Scripps National Spelling Bee competition that was staged on Wednesday, January 24.

The 22 students stood on the stage of the middle school’s auditorium, and after a long session that consumed 10 rounds, Dhruv Rakhade emerged as the champion.

In fact, he was the last student standing on stage when he correctly spelled the word
"anthropomorphic."

If Dhruv, an 8th Grader, failed to spell that word correctly, then the other small group of students who were eliminated in this 10th round would have been returned to the competition and an11th round would have been contested.

“I was just focused on getting the word right,’’ Dhruv revealed about standing alone on the stage. He credited his studying and his interest in linguistics as the crucial factors for his survival through this lengthy quiz.

Lindsay Rath, who served as the coordinator of this event for the second straight year, was “very impressed’’ with the performance of the 22 finalists, which was an increase from last year’s final round that consisted of 13 students.
“These kids were even better than last year. This took us 10 rounds,’’ Ms. Rath, a Latin Teacher at the Bridgewater-Raritan Middle School, said.

Dhruv will now join the winners from throughout Somerset County schools to compete in the eighth annual Spelling Bee Spectacular that is sponsored by the Scripps National Spelling Bee, which holds annual spelling bee competitions in the United States.

This Somerset County championship will be held Friday, March 1, and it will be a virtual event.

Dhruv received a champion certificate and also a one-year subscription to Encyclopedia Britannica, which is valued at $74.95, according to Ms. Rath.

Ms. Rath was joined by five other Bridgewater-Raritan Middle School staff members who served as judges in the auditorium.

The judges:

Alyssa DiGirolamo, a Student Assistant Counselor.
Melissa Kardos, 8th Grade Intervention Specialist
Corey Louie, Paraprofessional
Julia Meisterich, 7th Grade Counselor
Nicole Zivkovic, 7th Grade Intervention Specialist

The students who participated in the final round :

Ritvik Bala
Prisha Bhamidipati
Ritvik Diada
Jay Fang
Sai Gupta
Sricharan Gurugubelli
Sanika Jaiswal
Arnav Korgaonkar
Aishanya Makode
Arihaan Mallick
Nihal Mallipudi
Gloria Mikhail
Avantika Nambiar
Advik Narasimhan
Dhruv Rakhade
Samir Rangwalla
Anshuman Roy
Shubham Roy-Choudhury
Maanav Thirumalainathan
Mandarin Tien
Yash Vaswani
Navin Velappan Saravanan