Karthik Nemmani, a Texas eighth grader, is the winner of the 2018 Scripps National Spelling Bee.
And he almost never got here.
Karthik came to the Bee through a new program called RSVBee, which allows spellers who didn't win a regional bee or didn't have a sponsor a chance to compete with the best.
Clearly, it worked. Karthik is the best.
"It just goes to show that RSVBee is a very good opportunity for spellers in really hard regionals," Karthik said.
Karthik said there were only about six words that he didn't know all day. When he didn't know a word, he figured it out using language patterns.
Karthik took a moment on stage, he said, to take a breath and process the fact that he was here.
"It was just an adrenaline rush," he said. "It made me happy; it reminded me I had a job to do."
Karthik spelled "haecceitas" then "koinonia" correctly to win -- the latter is an intimate spiritual communion and participative sharing in a common religious commitment and spiritual community.
Karthik's cousin, Sri Nemmani, was a speller here, too -- Speller 375. Sri didn't make the finals, but he said he always expected Karthik to.
"I knew he was going to win," Sri said. "He studied for hours and hours and hours, countless hours."
Sri said he recognized the order of Karthik's questions, and could tell that he knew his words. Still, he said, he was excited for him. Sri, who lives in Tennessee, said he might go back to Dallas to celebrate with his cousin.
Rishi, Karthik's brother, said he was "tense and excited" while Karthik spelled.
"He knows all the words," said Varenya Nemmani, Karthik's cousin.
The speller cousins shared a hotel room, with Karthik's family paying their own way to the Bee.
Sri said since Karthik hadn't gone through the traditional course, he wasn't sure how he would react to the pressure.
"He had a cool and a calm demeanor," Sri said. "He's the best."
Karthik said he was surprised the final rounds didn't go longer. After all, he and the second-place finisher, Naysa Modi, duked it out in local bees. There, Naysa bested him.
"She deserves the trophy just as much if not more than I did," Karthik said.
Still, he didn't mind winning.
"I'm feeling really happy," he said.
