A seventh-grade student at Middle School 4 in Jersey City bested a crowded field of top young spellers Saturday to be named champion of the 2023 Hudson County Spelling Bee.
Kavya Jakasania, 13, correctly spelled “internecine” (meaning “marked by great slaughter; deadly”) in the 12th round to win the 64th annual bee, which returned to the live stage for the first time since the pandemic began.
Kavya was one of 62 spellers competing Saturday at High Tech High School in Secaucus before a crowd of family, friends, teachers and school administrators.
She now goes on to represent the county at the Scripps National Spelling Bee, which takes place Memorial Day week at Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center in National Harbor, Maryland.
Coming in second place was Milan Zhu, 13, an eighth-grader at School 37 in Jersey City.
The competition among the students, who ranged from third- to eighth-graders, became increasingly tight as the field narrowed. Each of the students had reached the county bee by being named champion of their elementary school.
In the end, Milan and Kavya went head-to-head for three rounds with Milan correctly spelling “theriatrics” (the science of veterinary medicine) and “burgoo” (a kind of stew) before missing “diastole” (the passive rhythmical expansion of the heart), sending Kavya to the championship round.
In those final rounds, Kavya correctly spelled “deglaciation” (the shrinking process of a glacier), “tiramisu” (a dessert) and “anathema” (a person or thing that is intensely disliked).
Sharing third place were students Thanasi Kontanis of Christa McAuliffe School in Jersey City; Kavya Dhillon of Dr. Michael Conti School in Jersey City; Mashary Ahmed of Franklin Williams School in Jersey City; and Aleksander Fennell of Hoboken Middle School.
The bee was sponsored by the Hudson County Office of Cultural Affairs and Heritage & Tourism Development. It was organized by Krista Kenny, the office’s special events program coordinator, who worked with schools, parents and Scripps to put it all together.
The official panel consisted of pronouncer Joe Ryan, public information officer for the City of Bayonne and an adjunct professor of Political Science at St. Francis College in Brooklyn; judges Margaret Schmidt, editor-at-large of The Jersey Journal, and Lee Penna, special events and community outreach coordinator for the Town of Secaucus; and record keeper Rosa Mundell, executive assistant, program development coordinator, Arts in Education, for the Hudson County Office of Cultural & Heritage Affairs/Tourism Development.
Ad Choices