Speller 16, Snehaa Ganesh Kumar, had to guess on the two words she received in the semifinals. Luckily, she wasn’t just guessing.
“I used the rules,” she said.
Snehaa is a seventh grader from Folsom, California. This is her first bee.
“I didn’t think it was going to be this exciting,” she said.
Snehaa said she finds a lot of words through reading. When she’s spelling on stage, she looks at her mom. Sometimes it helps, sometimes not.
“Sometimes she calms me down, sometimes she makes me more nervous,” she said. “If she smiles, it calms me down.”
Her mother, Vijaya Ganesh Kumar, said she’s proud of Snehaa.
“I wish her good luck,” she said. “She’s the first speller.”