Broward spelling bee champ makes it to Final 16 in national competition, to air on ESPN
Through five grueling rounds of words most people have never heard of — let alone spelled — 13-year-old Simone Kaplan kept her cool.
She barely hesitated when she was given words including fissiped, having the toes separated to the base, and marae, a Polynesian temple enclosure used for worship or sacrifice or other religious ceremonies.
“You will see that from Simone all day long,” said the Scripps National Spelling Bee announcer during the first round of competition Thursday. “If she knows the word, she’s not going to waste any time.”
Her method worked. Simone clinched a spot in the top 16 finalists of the national bee. She will compete for the trophy and more than $50,000 in prizes; ESPN will air the final round beginning at 8:30 p.m. Thursday.
Simone, known for her bumblebee-inspired fashion, appeared confident on Thursday morning when she took the stage sporting an off-white cold-shouldered top speckled with small bumblebees. She wore apple red jeggings (leggings that look like jeans) to match her red-soled shoes, which were embroidered with red cherries with bees.
The seventh-grader from St. Bonaventure Catholic School in Davie got nearly a perfect score in the preliminary rounds held earlier in the week. She missed only one question in 30 in the preliminary tests, which includes spelling, vocabulary and oral rounds. Only three of the 50 finalists missed only one. No one got a perfect score.
She was one of 50 finalists out the 562 competitors who gathered at The Gaylord in National Harbor, Maryland, for the annual national bee. The competition began last fall with more than 11 million students worldwide in eighth grade or under vying for the title of Scripps National Spelling Bee champion.
Last year, Simone made it to the finals and tied for 10th place, missing the word carmagnole, a dance and song popular during the French Revolution. The previous year, she tied for 189th place.
Simone’s mother Alana, who wore matching shoes and a jean jacket adorned by an ornate bumblebee on one shoulder, cheered her daughter, Speller Number 65, from the audience.
As Simone spelled, cameras focused on her bee-themed outfit. She sat in the front row of three rows of spellers on stage, smiling and seemingly unfazed at the microphone.
Under bright lights and dozens of TV cameras trained on her, Simone blazed through several multisyllabic tongue twisters. She often took less than 15 seconds to spit out words like cheiloplasty, plastic surgery to repair lip defects.
Her average spell time was 28 seconds, according to the spelling bee. As other spellers went down, Simone stood poised as the seats around her emptied.
She dished out high fives — to those who spelled a tough word correctly or to congratulate a competitor who was going home.
After Simone successfully spelled varsovienne, a type of dance, in the seventh round, her mother let out a sigh of relief. And her classmates cheered her on, appearing on a livestream feed from the Davie school.
“I believe that she will win,” her classmates chanted. Simone smiled calmly, looked into a nearby TV camera and made a heart with her hands.
This story was originally published May 30, 2019 at 5:00 PM.
