Hudson Valley Student Makes Final 45 in National Spelling Bee

An Orange County student will be representing the Hudson Valley in front of a national television audience as one of the finalists in the Scripps Spelling Bee.

Monroe-Woodbury Middle School student, Shashwat Patel correctly spelled "turbinado" and "cerebellar", making his through the preliminary round of the spelling bee. Patel is now ready to compete in the finals of the annual spelling championships. As the competition continues throughout the day you can cheer on Patel and watch his progress on ESPN2. If he makes it to the final rounds, Patel will put his spelling abilities to the test starting at 8pm on ESPN.

This year's contest was also attended by Alexandra Snyder who attends Linden Avenue Middle School in Red Hook. Alex was eliminated during the preliminary round in which she correctly spelled "radicchio" and "ventifact" but apparently just fell short on the written preliminaries test.

On a side note, Patel is apparently even smarter than the computer this article was written on. "Ventifact" is being flagged by our spellcheck. We're going to have to go with the official spelling bee judges on this one, though. Sorry Microsoft.