AMBLER — Indigo Satko, an 8th grader from Wissahickon Middle School, won the Scripps Bucks-Mont regional spelling bee, beating competitors from Bucks and Montgomery county schools. He won by spelling the word “neuropathy” after nine rounds of competition involving 33 spellers.
The spellers competed at Wissahickon High School on March 16. They studied the “Words of the Champions,” a 4,000-word list provided by the Scripps National Spelling Bee, to get ready for the competition.
Bob Hipp, president of the Perkasie Rotary, was the emcee for the event and Victoria DeLong, a speech-language pathologist at Perkiomen Valley School District, was the pronouncer. The judges were MJ Davis, a purchasing agent at PennEngineering and Manufacturing; Bill McGill, a third-grade teacher at Perkiomen Valley School District, and Amy Roslevege, an eighth-grade teacher at Hazelton School District.
Indigo will now compete in the 2024 Scripps National Spelling Bee near Washington, D.C. The semifinals on May 29 and the finals on May 30 will be shown on ION. He won the spelling bee at Wissahickon Middle School with the word “stimulus.”
In addition to qualifying for the national competition, Indigo also gets a six-night, all-expenses-paid trip for himself and one parent/guardian to the Scripps National Spelling Bee in Maryland; a first-place trophy; The Samuel Louis Sugarman Award of a 2024 United States Mint Proof Set provided by Jay Sugarman, chairman and CEO of iStar Financial, in honor of his father; Britannica Online Premium, a one-year subscription to the premier online resource from Encyclopedia Britannica; Merriam-Webster Unabridged Online, a one-year subscription to the official word source for all levels of competition for the Scripps National Spelling Bee; Epic Family, a one-year subscription to the world’s largest digital library for kids with access to 40,000+ kids’ books, videos and audiobooks, and Tynker, a one-year home subscription for a leading K-12 creative coding platform plus eight live, 1-on-1 online coding classes.
“The hard work and dedication of our school champions is clear at our spelling bee each year,” said Bill Senavaitis, president of PSEA’s Mideastern Region. “The spelling skills of these students never fails to impress those who watch the spelling bee progress, particularly in the final rounds.”
The Scripps Bucks-Mont Regional Bee is sponsored by the Mideastern Region of the Pennsylvania State Education Association, the Council for the Advancement of Public Schools, and Merriam-Webster Dictionary.
The second and third place winners were Ran Kumar, an 8th grader from Perkiomen Valley Middle School East, and Anusha Verma, an 8th grader from Perkiomen Valley Middle School West. For coming in second, Ryan received a second-place trophy; a copy of the Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, Eleventh Edition; and a $100 Amazon gift card. Anusha received a third-place trophy and a $50 Amazon gift card.
The Scripps National Spelling Bee provides the list of words for the regional competition. The bee reaches millions of students across the country and in other parts of the world with the classroom materials it provides to enrolled schools.
The Scripps National Spelling Bee is the biggest and oldest educational program in the country, starting in 1925. You can find more information about the Scripps National Spelling Bee at spellingbee.com. The E.W. Scripps Company manages it as a not-for-profit organization.
