Spelling out Success: Eighth Grader at Indian Hills Middle advances to State Spelling Bee

She stood alongside one other student under the bright, buzzing lights at Hilltop Learning Center waiting for the officials of the Johnson County Spelling Bee to reveal the correct answer. She’d been going head-to-head against one particular speller for almost two hours now. This final word was the culmination of her efforts — countless hours spent studying at the dining room table and poring over the extensive spelling lists had all led up to this moment.

“Onomatopoeia,” eighth-grader and Indian Hills student Ishya Bhavsar said. “O-n-o-m-a-t-o-p-o-e-i-a.”

With those 12 letters, she became the winner of the 2021 Johnson County Spelling Bee.

The results of the January 8 competition mark the second year in a row Bhavsar won the spelling bee, and she’s now going on to the Sunflower State Bee on March 27. She hopes to win this year, as her chance at victory was abruptly halted last year due to COVID-19, which spurred the bee’s complete cancellation. 

Bhavsar began to spell competitively in 2017 at her school’s spelling bee when she was in fourth grade. Ever since, she has been set on competing in the Scripps National Spelling Bee, hosted annually to determine the champion speller in the nation. She went to the National Bee — open to anyone in fourth through eighth grade — in 2019 and has hopes to return this year if she wins State. 

“I think [my passion for spelling] started when I watched the National Spelling Bee on TV and thought, ‘Oh, that’s really cool” Bhavsar said. “And there’s also the fact that I love to read and I just love words in general, so I thought that’d be a great competitive outlet for me.”

However, this isn’t a hobby she takes on alone. Her parents quiz her often on the extensive list of spelling words, while her younger sister, Jiya, finds new words for Bhavsar to study.

“We love to help her with the spelling words,” Bhavsar’s mother Noopur Pathak said. “And her little sister just wants to be like her older sister, so she got interested [in spelling] because of Ishya. Now she goes and finds new words and they talk it out discuss it. ‘What are the roots?’ and everything like that.”

Her gifted education case manager, Gabrianna Neuer, recognizes the time and effort that her family puts into helping her prepare for the spelling bee. 

“I have joked with [Bhavsar’s] parents that I want to make them varsity spelling mom and varsity spelling dad shirts because it really truly is a family affair,” Neuer said. “Her dad actually got in contact with me before school even started to make certain that Indian Hills was registered for the spelling bee, and gave me some resources.”

Bhavsar’s efforts paid off when she won the bee last year and this year again. Neuer describes Bhavsar’s quiet confidence, which shines as Bhavsar takes the competition stage, rattling off the spellings of lengthy words like “derivative” or “legerdemain.”

“She is working hard, so it’s a big relief that she’s moving on [to state],” Pathak said. “She spends two and a half hours on the weekdays studying and six hours a day on the weekend. The competition is very high because we have good school districts in the area. It is definitely a competitive thing.”

As the state spelling bee is coming up this month for spellers all across Kansas, Bhavsar and her family think back to the excited, relieved and overall satisfied feeling of her last win.

“I can’t really remember exactly what I was thinking after I won [the Johnson County Spelling Bee],” Bhavsar said. “Honestly, I just remember being really happy; I was just really excited.”