Spelling runs in the family

– Two sets of identical twins are among the more than 500 contestants vying for the top prize in this year’s Scripps National Spelling Bee, suggesting that spelling prowess, like athletic achievement, tends to run in families.

The 91st annual Bee, which began on Tuesday and ends tonight, includes 45 spellers with relatives who are former contestants in the national championship.

One of them, Atman Balakrishnan, a 12-year-old from Chicago, hopes to follow in the footsteps of his father, Balu Natarajan, the 1985 champion. Natarajan, now a sports medicine doctor, was 13 when he won.

For decades, Indian-American families like Balakrishan’s have groomed their children for success in the Bee, a commitment that was the subject of the 2002 documentary Spellbound. As a result, Indian-Americans have dominated the event for decades.

This year, the competition, which takes place in Oxon Hill, Maryland, will include identical twins for the first time. In fact, there are two sets of them.

“Twins often get involved with the same interests. In this case, you end up with an automatic study partner,” said Scripps communications manager Valerie Miller. “They help each other to do the best they can. They push each other and encourage each other.”

Aaron and Andrew Marcev, 11- year-olds from Hattiesburg, Mississippi, are mirror images of each other, judging from the portraits on spellingbee.com, which shows the boys dressed in matching blue shirts with neatly combed blonde hair.

In their photos, Pierce and Garrett Bryner, 13, of Price, Utah, also look exactly alike, both peering intently into the camera, their short blonde hair brushed back.

A record 516 spellers from the United States and eight foreign countries are vying for the crown, winnowed from 11 million hopefuls who competed in preliminary competitions at schools around the world.

Contestants, aged eight to 15, are 46% female and 54% male, according to the contest’s website. They will have to spell words drawn from the 470 000 entries in the Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary.

The winner of the $40 000 (R500 000) top prize will emerge from finals tonight, with a worldwide audience tuning in to ESPN.

The EW Scripps Co, which owns television and radio stations, runs the Bee on a nonprofit basis. – Reuters

Washington