Fulton student heading to nationals after winning Ga. spelling be

English as a language is hard enough, but add German and French to a hungry Creole twist and you get an oddball spelling like “andouille.”

And that was the winning word spelled by 13-year-old Johns Creek student Arushi Cumer on Friday during the 58th Georgia Association of Educators State Spelling Bee. According to the GAE, 20 spellers from across Georgia between 10 and 14 years old went through 250 words.

The win moves her on to the Scripps National Spelling Bee Championships in Maryland a couple months from now.

“It felt amazing because I had put so many hours into working,” the River Trail Middle School 7th-grader told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution on Monday.

From 2017 | Gwinnett student wins Georgia Spelling Bee; runner-up from Cobb

Here was the play-by-play at the end: Clara Padgett, a student from Columbia County, misspelled “alcalde” — which, of course, we all know is the chief administrative and judicial officer/mayor of a town in a Spanish-speaking region — in the 17th round. Then Arushi, who had to correctly spell two words in a row to win, got “hedebo” — if you’ve been living under a rock, that’s a word of Danish origin meaning “an embroidery characterized by drawn work and decorative stitching” — and she aced it.

Arushi then successfully sliced into “andouille,” a spiced pork sausage popular in Creole cuisine. After a big sigh amid the applause, she put her hands over her mouth and quickly acknowledged her competitor then struggled to hide her smile, as seen on a YouTube video posted by GAE.

Arushi was given an all-expense-paid trip to the championship in National Harbor, Maryland along with the following: an iPad Pro, a $50 Visa gift card, a Kindle, a one-year online subscription to the Encyclopedia Britannica Premium, a $100 U.S. Savings Bond.

The national Scripps championship will be May 28 to 30 on ESPN. She said being on television is a new challenge. “I still have stage fright, and being on TV is worse.” Her plan? “I breathe in, I try to stay calm.”

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From 2018...

Karthik Nemmani won the 2018 Scripps National Spelling Bee on Thursday, correctly spelling the word â€œkoinoniaâ€ to win the title and take home $40,000. Nemmani, a 14-year-old from Texas, defeated a field of more than 515 spellers, aged 8 to 15, hailing from across the United States and eight other countries.

About the Author

Ben Brasch

Ben Brasch is the reporter tasked with keeping Fulton County government accountable. The Florida native moved to Atlanta for a job with The AJC. If there's something important to you going on in Fulton, he wants to know about it. Help him better metro Atlanta by dropping a line, anonymously or otherwise.

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