WASHINGTON — A 13-year-old New Jersey girl won the Scripps National Spelling Bee Thursday night in a nerve-wracking finale that attracted prime-time television coverage for the first time in the contest's 79-year history.
Kerry Close, an eighth-grader from Spring Lake, N.J., who was returning for her fifth straight bee finals, nailed the German word ursprache — which is a parent language — to capture the title of America's top speller at the end of 19 tense rounds.
"I couldn't believe it," said Kerry, who took home $42,000 in cash and prizes. "I knew I knew the word, and I was just in shock. I couldn't believe I would win."
Kerry foiled 14-year-old Finola Hackett's bid to become the first Canadian to win the bee. Finola, an eighth-grader from Tofield, Alberta, was tripped up by another German word — weltschmerz, which the judges defined as sentimental pessimism. Finola spelled it with a "v" instead of a "w."
The once-nerdy bee has become a pop cultural phenomenon — with a film documentary ("Spellbound"), a movie ("Akeelah and the Bee") in theaters now — persuading ABC to broadcast Thursday night's competition live. It was the ultimate reality show.
The evening began with 13 hopefuls left standing after seven rounds over two days.
The first to fall in the championship round was Allion Salvador of Miami, an 11-year-old who was said to be teaching himself physiology, microbiology and neuroscience. He tripped on the word nauruz, misspelling it "naoruse."
Next to go was the youngest competitor left — 10-year-old Kavya Shivashankar, a fifth-grader from Olathe, Kan. Kavya, competing in her first national bee, misspelled the word gematrial. She thought it was "gematriol."
Fourteen-year-old Saryn Hooks of Taylorsville, N.C., was eliminated and left the stage only to learn after a commercial break that she hadn't misspelled her word — hechscher — after all.
"We made a mistake. You spelled the word correctly. Would you please take your seat?" head judge Mary Brooks told Saryn as the audience gasped. Saryn wiped tears from her eyes as she returned to the competition.
"I felt they were kidding or something," she said later of the judges.
Saryn wound up finishing third, misspelling the word icteritious. "I'll live with that," she said.
The last home-schooled child in the bee — 13-year-old Jonathan Horton of Gilbert, Ariz. — made it to Round 10. "I don't have a clue," he confessed before misspelling the word sciolto.
In a shocker earlier in the day, Samir Patel — a home-schooled seventh-grader from Fort Worth, Texas, who had been favored to win the 79th annual bee — stumbled on the word eremacausis.
"I'm going to take some time off and then start spelling again," Samir said with tears streaming down his face after his elimination. "I'm disappointed. But it's luck of the draw. Next year's my last chance, so I really, really, really wanna win." Samir, who had competed in the national contest three other times and was runner-up last year, had been dubbed "this year's rock star" by an ESPN commentator. Earlier Thursday, he leaped in the air after he correctly spelled the words "saponin" and "thymiaterion" in rounds 5 and 6. But not this time.
Clearly panic-stricken, Samir asked the judges whether eremacausis — which refers to the gradual oxidation of organic matter from exposure to air and moisture — comes from the Greek word for air. The judges said they didn't see the meaning listed.
Stalling, Samir asked the judges for bonus time, an extra minute spellers can request one time only. "Does not come from air," Samir said quietly at the microphone. "Does not come from air."
A bell indicating it was time to finish the spelling of the word sounded. "Samir, it's finish time," a female judge said. Samir spelled the word aeromocausis. Just like that, he was finished.
Tension increased after the unexpected defeat of the frontrunner, as the remaining contestants were faced with nasoparyngeal, maquillage, totipalmate and siphonapterology.
Throughout the day the dreaded bell sounded over and over. To makes matters worse, spellers had the added the pressure of television cameras and frequent commercial breaks. ESPN broadcast the earlier rounds Thursday before ABC took over.
"What?" asked 13-year-old Jonathan Horton of Arizona, when the official pronouncer presented the word "soliste." He ended up spelling the word right and was still in the race going into the evening.
Marissa Lyn Estep, 13, had a difficult time hearing the "clearing-throat" sound in the middle of the word "echt," which means genuine or authentic. "Etht?" she asked pronouncer Jacques Bailly, a former spelling bee champ himself.
"Echt," Bailly repeated over and over again — even stepping away from the microphone — before Marissa, of Winchester, Va., was able to replicate it.
The audience applauded.
"Is the word German?" she asked. The audience laughed in sympathy.
Marissa spelled the word correctly. But she did not make it past the 5th round of competition. Throughout the afternoon, some children seemed to spell with relative ease. Matthew Giese was given the word, "helminthiasis," which means an infestation or disease caused by parasitic worms.
""H-E-L-M-I-N-T-H-I-A-S-I-S," the 14-year-old from Cincinnati fired off like a round of bullets. --> The bee began Wednesday with 275 elementary and middle school students — 139 boys and 136 girls — in the competition. They qualified by winning contests in all 50 states, plus Canada, the Bahamas, Europe, Guam, Jamaica, New Zealand, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands.
E-mail: Parnes@shns.com and Mara Lee at LeeM@shns.com