Chesterfield Spelling Champ Headed to National Contest

Chesterfield spelling bee champion Gokul Venkatachalam is headed into the national spelling bee arena Wednesday, competing among 278 others for the big win.

The Chesterfield fifth grader won the St. Louis Post-Dispatch spelling bee last month.

Geiger encouraged the composed young student to follow in the footsteps of the 2000 winner of the National Spelling Bee, George Abraham Thampy, who was also sponsored by the Post-Dispatch. He spelled demarche to win.

In 2012, Venkatachalam spelled "telegnosis" (which has a "silent g" in pronunciation) to win among 36 others in the St. Louis area contest.

Now, he's speller No. 141 in the National Spelling Bee by The E.W. Scripps Company starting Wednesday and running for three days.

It's held in National Harbor, MD. The competition is televised. Here's the lineup:

Preliminaries: May 30, 8am-5:30pm EDT. Live on ESPN3.com
Semifinals: May 31, 10am-1pm EDT. Live on ESPN2.
Championship Finals: May 31, 8-10pm EDT. Live on ESPN. 

Here's the Chesterfield champ's official info:

Speller No. 141, Gokul Venkatachalam

Sponsor: St. Louis Post-Dispatch, St. Louis, MO

Age: 11

Grade: fifth

School: Claymont Elementary School, Ballwin, MO (Parkway District)

Profile:

Gokul likes to read and play basketball. His favorite book is The Hunger Games, and he enjoys the Harry Potter movies. Gokul is involved in extracurricular activities like swimming, playing cello in the school orchestra and participating in the Math Olympiad program. He actively follows sports teams like basketball, football and baseball. He would most like to meet St. Louis Cardinal baseball player David Freese, whose persistence helped the Cardinals clinch the 2011 World Series title. In school, Gokul excels at math and would like to become a scientist.

Here's what he did Tuesday: 

• Round One is a computer spelling test taken by all 278 spellers. Scores from the test will be combined with the results of Rounds Two and Three to determine our semifinalists.
• Spellers will hear a recording of Dr. Bailly pronouncing each word, and information about each word (origin, part of speech, definition, sentence) will be displayed on-screen. The test will have no time limit, and spellers will be given multiple opportunities to review their answers and word information prior to submitting their final answers.
• Spellers will spell 50 words, but only 25 spellings will count toward each speller’s Preliminaries score. Bee officials will have chosen these “score words” prior to May 29, but score word status will not be apparent to the speller. Bee officials will publicly identify score words following Round Three. Each speller’s test score will be given to his or her parents after Round Three begins on Wednesday, May 30.

St. Louis also won the national spelling bee in 1962 and 1955, according to Bee records online.