As Tanay Patri stands on stage and hears the word he must spell, a rush of adrenaline goes through his body.
“You think about what’s at stake and you think about how to spell the word at the same time,” said the 12-year-old McCallie School sixth-grader.
“Your heart is pumping. If you know the word, you feel really good; if you don’t, you are trying to figure it out because you know that if you miss this word you are going to be eliminated,” he added Tuesday from Washington, D.C., a day before he starts competing in the Scripps National Spelling Bee.
COMPETITION FAST FACTS* 273 spellers.* The spellers range in age from 8 to 15 years old, but 80 percent are between the ages of 12 and 14.* English is not the first language of 21 spellers, and 102 spellers speak languages other than English.Source: www.spellingbee.comABOUT TANAY PATRI* Age: 12* Grade: Sixth grade* School: McCallie School* Profile: He loves sports and is on the swimming and tennis teams. He plays competitive chess and won the 2010 Tennessee Chess Association Region II championship. Tanay also is on the high school chess teams. Other hobbies are reading and collecting coins. He participated in the 2009 Scripps Howard National Spelling Bee.
Tanay, who is sponsored in the spelling bee by the Chattanooga Times Free Press, is one of six Tennesseans and 273 spellers competing for the national title, which will be decided between today and Friday. Last year, he tied for 42nd place out of 296 participants, he said.
He said the competition, even at the regional level, is tough, but he feels good about it and has a goal to do better than last year.
“Tanay is a great student and a well-rounded young man,” said Lynn Goss, head of McCallie Middle School. “He has worked extremely hard to excel in the Spelling Bee, and it has paid off. We are certainly proud of him and wish him luck this week.”
Meanwhile, his father, Neelanjan Patri, said he has his fingers crossed.
“All the kids who come here represent a district, and all of them are really good at what they do,” he said. “He has done the best he can and, regardless of where he places, we will be proud of him.”
Although English is not Tanay’s first language — he grew up speaking Hindi first — he said he caught on to English pretty quickly once he started school and just loves the language.
“I like spelling because basically the letters go together to form a word and the letter may be repeated over and over but each time they make a different sound and that really intrigues me,” he said. “How can all of that happen within the same language?”
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