Local Spelling Whiz Aims For Prestigious National Title

Bruhat Soma isn’t exactly sure what “pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis” means (it’s a synonym for the disease known as silicosis), but the 45-letter word, the longest in the English language, gives him no trouble when it comes to spelling it, or pronouncing it for that matter.

That shouldn’t come as any surprise, considering that Bruhat, a 5th grader at Turner Bartels K-8 School, is something of a world-class word speller.

This week, the 10-year-old whiz kid will compete at the prestigious Scripps National Spelling Bee in Washington, D.C.

Bruhat (who will be wearing No. 38 at the competition) will be one of 234 kids vying for the title. The Bee begins May 31; the Semifinals (June 1) and Finals (June 2) will be hosted by former “Roots” and “Star Trek: The Next Generation” star LeVar Burton will air on the Ion TV network at 8 p.m. each night.

Bruhat will be one of the youngest competitors, but not the youngest — that honor will go to Matthew G. Yi, a 7-year-old 4th grader from New Orleans. But, Bruhat is already battle-tested. 

Last year, he finished second at the Regional qualifier, stumbling on the word “caryatid” (a sculpted female figure serving as an architectural support taking the place of a column), which he incorrectly spelled “carotid.” 

Ever since, he has had just one goal:

Being the champ.

“I just like competitions. I really want to get that trophy,” Bruhat says, his eyes widening and a large grin filling his face. “It’s so big!”

The winner also receives $50,000.

Bruhat has only been competing in spelling bees for three years. His dad, Srinivas Soma, signed him up when he was in the second grade for a spelling and math bee put on by the North South Foundation (aka North South), which organizes educational contests like spelling, math and geography bees, as well as others.

(l.-r.) Turner-Bartels principal LaMarr Buggs and gifted teacher Laurie Gonzalez, with Scripps National Spelling Bee contestant Bruhat Soma and his father Srinivas. (Photo: Charmaine George)

Although he didn’t have time to prepare, Bruhat finished first in the math bee, and sheepishly says he was eighth in spelling.

“There was no pressure,” dad Srinivas says. “He liked it. He started to show interest in it.”

Srinivas says Bruhat now has even more interest in reading and spelling, devouring everything in sight. He will read just about any piece of paper or book he can get his hands on, and works at least an hour a day on his spelling online at SpellPundit.com.

“I like unusual words,” Bruhat says. “If I see a word with an unusual spelling, I try to find out more information about it.”

Like “cwm” (pronounced “koom”), an ancient Celtic instrument similar to a violin. And yes, cwm is in the Official Scrabble Players Dictionary.

“I like eccentric words like that,” Bruhat says.

For his end-of-the-year gifted class project at Turner Bartels, Bruhat created his own alphabet (with uppercase and lowercase letters) and wrote a poem about soccer in his new language.

“He excels in mathematics, but his real love is words,” says his gifted class teacher Laurie Gonzalez, 

His classmates, and the entire school, will be pulling hard for Bruhat.

“He is an amazing kid,” Gonzalez says. “He is gentle, kind and wicked smart. The other kids are very supportive of his achievements and they are kind of in awe of his level of intelligence.”

His buddy, Tejas Gattu, is sure to be watching as well.

“He (Tejas) always, like, tells me, ‘Wow, you’re the champion,’” Bruhat says. “One time, at a North South Regional, he said out loud so everyone could hear, ‘Bruhat, are you the state spelling bee champion?’ I was like, I already told you. I think he’s excited, he thinks it’s a big deal. He’s my best friend.”

Srinivas, who is originally from Nalgonda is southern India, says the cheering section at home — his mother Jyothi and sisters Reshma (6) and Laasya (8) — and in the Live Oak Preserve community are ready to root for Bruhat.

“There will be a lot of people cheering for him,” Srinivas says.

Bruhat will need the good vibes in what is sure to be a pressure-packed week.

While he hopes to see the White House, the Washington Monument and as many other memorials as he has time for, the Spelling Bee competition will be fierce. Since there were eight co-champions in 2019, the Scripps organizers have made the event more difficult. It now includes definitions in some rounds and, yes, the words are even tougher.

“I watched the 2019 spelling bee and I knew all the words, or like 98 percent of them,” Bruhat says. “In 2021, it was more like 50 percent.”

But, he is ready. He will be trying to become the second New Tampa student to win the national bee, joining Benito Middle’s Nupur Lala, who won the title on her second try in 1999 as a 14-year-old by spelling “logorrhea.”

“I’m very excited to compete, but when the competition day comes closer, I’ll probably feel kind of nervous,” Bruhat says. “For now, I’m excited. My goal is to become the Scripps Spelling Bee national champion. I have prepared for that.”

Nupur Lala reflects on her National Spelling Bee win 20 years ago

THE WORD was “logorrhea.”

Nupur Lala bought some time by asking for it to be used in a sentence. A hint of a smile crossed her bespectacled face. Inside, she was bursting.

Meena Lala watched her 14-year-old daughter intently. There had been one scare during the Scripps National Spelling Bee, but that was a few rounds back, on the word “poimenics,” maybe the only time she had gotten nervous. 

But not now. Not on this word.

“L-O-G…”

Odalys Pritchard remembers the moment like it was yesterday. She was on the edge of her seat, watching her Benito Middle School eighth grader on ESPN trying to spell her way into history.

“I remember seeing the smile and the confidence when they gave her the word,” Pritchard says. “I knew she knew it.”

“…O-R-R…”

Right before she was given the final word, Nupur caught a glimpse of the event organizers preparing the trophy for the winner.

“It felt like a dream,” she says, and she wasted no time, quickly spelling the winning word.

 “…H-E-A!” 

When Nupur nailed the final word at the 76th annual Scripps National Spelling Bee on June 3, 1999, she jumped as high as she could two times, stopped to tuck her shoulder-length hair behind each ear, and jumped again, her yellow placard designating her as Speller No. 165 flailing about with her arms.

She grabbed the big trophy, raised it up to the sky and smiled the widest of smiles.

 “It didn’t feel real,” says Nupur, now age 34. “I remember jumping up and down, and wondering ‘Is there going to be ground beneath me when I land?’”

***

Twenty years later, she remembers every detail, from the hero’s greeting she received at Tampa International Airport to receiving a key to the city to a slew of television cameras eager to record her every move.

There were banners declaring “Busch Gardens Spells Champ N-U-P-U-R” and local daily newspaper headlines calling her “The goddess of spelling.” The Neighborhood News (see pg. 36) called her “Super Nupur.” 

New York Yankees owner George Steinbrenner invited her to New York and gave her tickets to see “Phantom”  on Broadway. Even Hooters put up a sign congratulating Nupur.

Her parents, Meena and Nupur’s father Parag, had her write the restaurant a thank-you letter.

“In hindsight, thinking back, it was extraordinary,” she says. “I’ll never forget the way that Tampa treated me.”

Nupur is greeted at Busch Gardens after her win.

However, when she felt the most famous, she says, is when her mother was driving her home to Hunter’s Green one day, and the guard at the gate asked if that was the Spelling Bee champ in the back seat.

Meena said yes, and he asked if she could hop out and say hi. This was a time before cell phones, so he didn’t want a picture. He just wanted to congratulate her and share his admiration for her accomplishment.

“That might have been the moment I felt really famous,” Nupur says.

***

It was just the beginning, though. In 2002, the documentary “Spellbound” was released, to critical acclaim. It followed Nupur and seven other Regional champions through the 1999 Scripps Spelling Bee competition. It earned $6-million and was nominated for an Oscar, giving Nupur a second round of fame.

She never thought she would always be the Spelling Bee champ from Benito Middle School in Tampa.

“I’d say it’s the one accomplishment in my life people are still interested in,” she says. “It has stayed with me more than anything I’ve done.”

There were times, she says, that fact chafed Nupur. To be defined by something you did at age 14, when you barely knew then who you even were, and then to have so much more expected of you as a result, was frustrating at times. 

“I’ve had different feelings at different points in my life about all of it,” Nupur says. “Definitely early high school, early college, I felt that there were such massive expectations from winning the Spelling Bee at 14. I was still trying to figure out who I was and where I wanted to fit in in the world. It was very difficult.”

Today, however, Nupur has found her path. As a result, it is easier to embrace being noticed by someone who recognizes her name or face. 

***

Nupur attended high school in Fayetteville, AR, where her family had moved just a few months after the Spelling Bee victory. She graduated from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor in 2007 with a B.S. degree in Brain Cognitive and Behavioral Science, and worked for three years at the Massachusetts Institute of technology (MIT) in Cambridge doing functional MRI research in cognitive neuroscience

She graduated with a Master’s degree in Cancer Biology from the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in 2015. And, after earning her Doctor of Medicine degree from the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences in Little Rock, she is now doing her residency in Neurology at the Rhode Island Hospital in Providence.

She hopes to do a fellowship in neuro-oncology, specifically Glioblastoma multiforme, the brain cancer that killed U.S. Senator John McCain.

***

Millions of students from all 50 states battle each year to make it to The Scripps National Spelling Bee, scheduled this year for Sunday-Friday, May 26-31, in Washington, D.C.

A Benito newsletter recognized Nupur, as well as her stiffest competition.

Nupur remembers the grind. She did her first spelling bee in Kaye Whitehurst’s seventh grade English class, merely to earn extra credit. She hadn’t even heard of the Scripps Spelling Bee, but once she discovered she was good at it, winning it became a goal.

Few remember that she actually made it to our nation’s capital for the first time as a seventh grader, when she was eliminated in the third round on the first day in 1998.

She was happy and proud, but she remembers while she was almost universally praised for her efforts, a classmate taunted her by reminding her that she didn’t win.

“I still remember that feeling. One moment you can be on top, and the next moment, you’re back to being a regular kid,” she says. “I didn’t realize how much it bothered me or how much I internalized that feeling. It fueled me for years.”

Nupur says it was Whitehurst, who had gone to D.C. with her student in 1998, and Pritchard, who is now interim deputy director for Hillsborough County’s Achievement Schools, that helped lift up her spirits. 

“Teachers don’t even know the impact they make,” Nupur says. “I hope they read this and know they made a tremendous difference.”

***

With Meena (who spent many hours reading the practice words to her daughter), Whitehurst and Pritchard in her corner, Nupur was determined to get back to the National Spelling Bee in the eighth grade, and her goal was to make it to the televised portion of the event. She competed in a half dozen regional events to qualify, but says the stiffest competition was actually at Benito. 

There were 249 competitors from around the country who survived Regionals and made it to Washington and 144 of them were eliminated on the first day.

But, not Nupur. She had made it to the televised portion on Day 2, and when she did, she says a strange calm came over her.

“I met my goal,” she remembers thinking. “It was still the most surreal moment of my life.”

Nupur’s parents moved to the U.S. from a small town in central India in 1984, where Parag worked as an engineering professor at Syracuse University in upstate New York, where Nupur was born. They moved to Tampa in 1997.

Nupur’s win marked a historic shift in the Spelling Bee. Since her win, 19 spellers of Indian descent have either been champion or co-champion.

Since her win, Nupur says she did not watch the Spelling Bee every year. She confesses to a rebellious period where she didn’t want to be the “goddess of spelling” anymore.

But, when she does watch it, she says she finds herself moved by the reactions of the winners, as well as her own memories.

“It was the culmination of a lot of hard work, by me and my family,” Nupur says. “I did something very few people have, and I will forever be grateful for that moment.”

So will those who knew her, like Pritchard. Nupur’s picture commemorating her win still hangs in the front office at Benito. And, for a long time, there was a large photo portrait of Nupur displayed at the Hillsborough County School Board boardroom auditorium, until the boardroom was renovated in 2017.

“It was always nice seeing that picture,” Pritchard says. “I can’t believe it’s been 20 years. Nupur was a shining star. There’s probably a lot of people who remember her vividly.”