Last year's state co-champs win spelling bee again After 12 rounds and once the lesser spellers had been weeded out by words like "Malinois," (a Belgian sheepdog), "deportee," and "bonnaz" (a French kind of embroidery), only last year's co-champions, 13-year-old Shobha Dasari and 12-year-old Syamantak Payra, remained. Fifty-five elite spellers from across Texas, drawn from more than 100,000 students in 1,060 schools, gathered Saturday to compete ...
March 30, 2014 - Houston Chronicle