ALL IN THE FAMILY
When it comes to spelling, these Woodlands siblings are among elite in competitions
One family in The Woodlands has cornered the market on a favorite American pastime — spelling bees.
It all started when Shobha Dasari brought home a flier advertising her elementary school’s spelling bee. That year, 10-year-old Shobha would go on to win the school and district championship in the Pearland Independent School District.
The following year, younger brother Shourav joined in, and together, they held a firm monopoly over the district competition until the family moved to The Woodlands a little over a year ago.
Shobha was a Houston Public Media Spelling Bee champion from 2012 to 2015 — three of those years as co-champion — and moved onto the Scripps National Spelling Bee in Washing-
ton D.C. four times. Along with her trophies, she’s received a new dictionary each year.
“We’ve gotten so many, we’ve been giving them back,” Shobha says jokingly.
Though she’s been to D.C. a few times, she’s been unable to seal her queen bee status.
Now that Shobha is a freshman at The Woodlands College Park High School, she’s aged out of the competition. The family’s last chance at claiming the crowning spelling bee achievement now rests with younger brother Shourav. Now that he’s a 2016 Houston Public Media Spelling Bee champion, he’s well on his way. Love of language
The Dasari family lives in a two-story home on a cul-de-sac surrounded by lush green, overhanging trees. Step into their home and at the foot of the winding staircase is a shrine to the kids’ achievements. One large wall with a floor to ceiling wooden shelf is packed with trophies and medals for Shourav and his sister. Tennis, basketball, Math Kangaroo, science fair and, of course, tons of spelling bee awards.
“I love how the words are put together and how some of the weirder words are crazy spelling. Those are the ones I remember the most,” 13-year-old Shourav said reminiscently.
Spelling bee is like a trade for the Dasari family, who have traveled all over the country to participate in competitions. And that level of rigor comes with practice. Shourav spends at least eight hours a week going over words with Shobha and his mom, Usha, the family’s personal coach.
“It’s a year-round effort. We don’t skip any days unless there are some exams, tournaments, tennis tournaments, but other than that, it’s year-round,” Usha said.
Every day revolves around training for another bee. To maximize practice time, Usha puts together lists while Shourav is gone for the day. Once he comes home from school or tennis practice and wraps up his homework, he and Usha go over words from a large hardcover copy of Webster’s Third New International Dictionary and other obscure words she and the family have compiled.
Then comes the tricky part. The spelling bee is more than just every day words in the English language. Kids may spell words from Afrikaans, Dutch, German, French and other languages. But those aren’t as difficult as learning taxonomic names — those Latin names that biologically classify living and fossil organisms — minerals, and geographic names and cities. (Here’s an example: the city of Kiamusze, China, which is pronounced ji-a-mu-si.)
Shourav will never forget the genus name that tripped him up during the 2014 Houston Public Media Spelling Bee, where he competed against his sister and 53 other elite spellers. That word knocked him out of the competition in the seventh round.
“E-I-C-H-H-O-R-NI-A,” Shourav says, both testing himself and remembering how nervous he was that day. “That was probably the hardest I’ve ever gotten.” Family tradition
Though older sister Shobha might be more familiar to Houstonians, Shourav is an elite speller in his own right. He won both the 2015 MetLife South Asian Spelling Bee and the 2015 North South Foundation Spelling bee, which is also aimed at Indian American kids across the country. But his wins haven’t qualified him for the biggest national bee in the country — until now.
“Houston is one of the toughest (competitions). It’s very difficult to get from Houston to nationals,” said father Ganesh Dasari about the regional spelling bee.
“It felt like a mini-nationals in Houston. The words were so hard,” Usha added about this year’s regional competition.
Being crowned the 2016 Houston Public Media Spelling Bee champion in April, a first time for Shourav, made him eligible to compete in the Scripps National Spelling Bee for the first time. He was cochampion, tying with a fifth-grader from Leander ISD after 14 rounds and 53 competitive spellers. Shourav’s winning word: guaguanche, pronounced gwuh-gwant-shi.
The Houston Public Media Spelling Bee is a regional competition with dozens of kids from across Texas filtering in from all directions. After kids win at the school- and district-level competitions, the winners are eligible to compete in the Houston regionals before going off to the final stop, the 91-year-old Scripps National Spelling Bee.
The national bee will be held May 22-27. The competition will include preliminary rounds that comprise a multiple choice exam and two rounds of onstage verbal spelling. Those who make it through to the semifinals will be confronted with another multiple choice test and two more rounds of on-stage verbal spelling. The televised championship finals is the third tier of the competition and consists of only verbal spelling.
If Shourav doesn’t win nationals this year, he has just one more chance to clinch his title victory in 2017.
Though the thrill of spelling a word right drives Shourav, being a top speller goes beyond competitions. It’s about the love of learning.
“Both my kids are passionate about it. Spelling bee is a lifelong passion for words. It’s not for the sake of competitions we are doing; it’s about learning,” Usha said.