National Spelling Bee drama: Texas girl goes on to win after her elimination is reversed

A Texas girl who was eliminated from the finals of the National Spelling Bee was given a second chance and ended up taking the championship trophy.

Harini Logan, a 14-year-old eighth-grader from San Antonio, won the title in the contest’s first-ever lightning-round tiebreaker, Thursday night in Oxon Hill, Md. Runner-up was Vikram Raju, 12, from Aurora, Colo.

“Harini has been to hell and back with her spelling bee experiences,” said her longtime coach Grace Walters.

Walters rushed to the bee judges after Harini was told in the second round of finals — a vocabulary rather than a spelling round — that she had incorrectly defined pullulation. She said it referred to the nesting of mating birds; the judges said it was swarming bees.

A few minutes later, head judge Mary Brooks announced the reversal: “We (did) a little deep dive in that word and actually the answer you gave to that word is considered correct, so we’re going to reinstate you.”

Two rounds later — officially Round 11 of the competition — only Harini and Vikram remained of the initial 13 finalists. When neither had clinched a victory after Round 18, the officials called for the lightning round: Each had 90 seconds to spell as many words as they could from a predetermined spell-off list, and the one who spelled the most would be declared the winner.

The rule was instituted after a recent run of championship ties, including an eight-way tie in 2019.

Harini correctly spelled 22 words to Vikram’s 15. The winning word, according to bee officials, was moorhen, a type of bird, because that was the one that moved her past Vikram.

Harini said she practiced for the lightning round, because “when it got introduced last year, I was a bit terrified, to be honest. I go slow. That’s my thing. I didn’t know how I would fare in that setting.”

Hers was not the only reinstatement of the competition. Surya Kapu, a 13-year-old from South Jordan, Utah, appealed his misspelling of the word leucovorin in Wednesday’s semifinal, saying that judges erred in answering his question about the word’s roots. He was allowed into finals, but was eliminated in the vocabulary round.

Harini, a crowd favorite for her poise and positivity, wins more than $50,000 in cash and prizes. It was her fourth appearance at the national bee; her previous best finish was 30th.

She is the fifth champion of the Scripps National Spelling Bee to be coached by Walters, a former speller, fellow Texan and student at Rice University.