The day after she lost in the Spelling Bee, Davie 7th-grader does one thing: Has ice cream

After 14 riveting rounds of spelling such monosyllabic mouthfuls as autotopagnosia and huanglongbing, Davie seventh-grader Simone Kaplan got stumped in the 15th round.

Her word: tettigoniid, which stems from the word Tettigoniidae, the name of a large insect family whose best-known member is the long-horned grasshopper.

The 13-year-old St. Bonaventure Catholic School student missed it by one letter, spelling it tettogoniid.

As she walked off the stage of the Scripps National Spelling Bee finals, her mother, father and younger sister Maya gave her a big bear hug.

“Hearing the bell wasn’t as shocking as I thought it would be because I was so proud of how far I’d come,” said Simone Thursday night. “Being on that stage made me realize that I do have a higher level of achievement in spelling than I originally thought I did, and so I believe that most likely I’m coming again — unless my mom has anything to say about it.”

After 16 finalists competed in a live broadcast on ESPN Thursday night that lasted more than three hours — and 20 rounds — the Bee declared the eight remaining spellers as co-champions, the first group to share the title in the Bee’s 92-year history.

The other eight contestants had been eliminated in earlier rounds; Simone was the last person eliminated, in the 15th round. She placed ninth.

The eight champions each will receive a cash prize of $50,000 as well as their own Scripps Cup.

“These spellers have conquered the dictionary unequivocally with their ability, skill and command of the English language,’’ said Paige Kimble, executive director of the Scripps National Spelling Bee. “It’s an incredible achievement, and we salute all the years of hard work and dedicated study that brought these intelligent young people to the world stage.”

Simone’s quest to reach the finals began with winning the 79th Annual Miami Herald Broward County Spelling Bee in March. Her championship word: Naveta, which according to Merriam Webster, means “a megalithic long barrow of the Balearic islands resembling an inverted boat.”

Then came the national competition, which began Monday with 562 spellers, culled from last fall, when more than 11 million students worldwide in eighth grade or under began their quest to be named Scripps National Spelling Bee champion. Simone was one of the 16 winnowed from the 562 who made it to the finals.

Simone, known for her smarts as well as stylish bee-inspired fashions, whizzed through the rounds leading up to the final.

After Round 1, which included written spelling and vocabulary tests, she soared through Rounds 2 through 8, conquering such words as stichos, a line, stich or verse; fissiped, having the toes separated to the base; and marae, a Polynesian temple enclosure used for worship or sacrifice.

Simone’s first word in the Thursday night finals — by this time, it was Round 9 — was Stakhanovite, a Soviet industrial worker awarded recognition and special privileges for output beyond production norms.

After spelling it correctly, the announcer quipped, “She’s got swagger.”

Then came the Round 10 word autotopagnosia, loss of the power to recognize or orient a bodily part due to a brain lesion.

In Round 11, Simone barely hesitated with the word athyreosis, an abnormal condition caused by a dysfunctional thyroid gland.

Said the ESPN announcer about her quick delivery: “If she knows a word, she doesn’t mess around with it.”

By Round 12, she easily conquered leister, a spear armed with three or more barbed prongs to catch fish.

When it came time to Round 13, Simone hoped to flex her encyclopedia knowledge when she was given the word huanglongbing.

“This is a fruit,” Simone confidently told the judges. “This is a citrus fruit and it’s from Chinese.”

To her mild dismay, Simone was told by the judges that it was actually not a fruit, but a disease that afflicts citrus fruit. (Huanglongbing has to do with citrus greening, the bacterial disease that kills citrus trees, including many in Florida.)

“I was close,” Simone said, before easily spelling the word.

For Round 14, she breezed through manualiter, related to a direction in organ music.

The 15th Round led to her elimination.

When the judges told her the word — tettigoniid — she started off just fine, spelling “T, E, T, T,” pronouncing each letter precisely. But then came the next letter. She said “O,” instead of “I.”

She spelled the rest of the word correctly.

Despite her marathon day, which began 10 hours earlier in the first round of the finals, Simone stayed in the audience with her family, silently spelling the words given to the eight remaining contestants over the next five rounds.

She said watching the finals from the audience was incredible.

“It’s something absolutely unprecedented,” she said. “I knew these were spellers of the highest caliber.”

This was Simone’s third trip to the Scripps Bee, each time winning the Miami Herald Broward Spelling Bee. Last year, she tied for 10th place in the finals, missing the word carmagnole, a dance and song popular during the French Revolution. The previous year, she tied for 189th place.

Next year will be the last year she can qualify for the competition as she will be an eighth-grader, the Bee’s cutoff.

As for going back next year, Simone said Friday she isn’t ready to make a decision.

“I will think and pray on it,” she said.

Either way, spelling will always be part of her life.

“I have learned so much from being a part of this,’’ said Simone, who spent Friday in Washington with her family, the first day she had been out of the hotel since arriving on Sunday.

“I had sugar and ate out,” going to Thomas Sweet, the ice cream shop that had been President Obama’s favorite spot.

Now that the competition is over, Simone said she plans on catching up on Netflix, reading and going outside.

And she had one more thing to say to all those who believed in her, from her family, teachers, spelling tutors and fellow students.

“Thank you everybody for supporting me along my journey,’’ she said. “I hope I haven’t let you down.”

This story was originally published May 31, 2019 at 7:39 PM.