Scripps National Spelling Bee 2015 Results: Gokul Venkatachalam, Vanya Shivashankar named co-champions
By Josh Hill
The Scripps National Spelling Bee determined a winner, and there were co-champions who walked away the big winners of the night.
It’s hard enough for most of us to spell out names right sometimes, but for a handful adolescent kids, words like hippocrepiform are a piece of cake to spell. The Scripps National Spelling Bee isn’t for everyone, and the finals came down to the two best young spellers in the world, but it was as thrilling a finals as you could have hoped for.
We’re talking about watching kids spell words, but it was amazing to watch and it came right down to the wire as far as who would be the winner.
The rules state that the Championship List consists of 25 words and if all words are exhausted, both spellers still standing are crowned as champs together. That’s exactly what happened, as Gokul Venkatachalam and Vanya Shivashankar were named co-champions after all but two of the words on the Championship List were used up.
It’s not unprecedented for two winners to be crowed, as we saw that happen last year and it’ll probably happen again. What’s amazing about this is the way the two winners blew through the 23 words on the list.
The way things ended seemed right based on what happened throughout the day. Both Gokul and Vanya burned through insanely hard words that most of us couldn’t imagine spelling even with help, and they did it all alone in front of millions of viewers.
Neither of these spellers felt the pressure of the moment, and both are more than deserving of being champions tonight.