Arkansan at spelling bee bows out after 2nd word

Haris Rana, 13, of Fort Smith participates in the preliminary rounds of the 2017 Scripps National Spelling Bee on Wednesday in National Harbor, Md. Haris survived a morning round but was eliminated in the afternoon.
Haris Rana, 13, of Fort Smith participates in the preliminary rounds of the 2017 Scripps National Spelling Bee on Wednesday in National Harbor, Md. Haris survived a morning round but was eliminated in the afternoon.

NATIONAL HARBOR, Md. -- Facing television cameras and a sea of spectators was nerve-wracking for Arkansas' representative at the National Spelling Bee, but he made it through the morning round before being eliminated Wednesday afternoon.

Haris Javed Rana, an eighth-grader at Chaffin Junior High School in Fort Smith, correctly spelled "Keynesian" during his initial appearance, but he left the stage after getting "transference" wrong.

The 13-year-old had spelled it "transferrance."

Wednesday's rounds were broadcast online by ESPN.

A small bell rang, letting Haris know he'd been eliminated. The crowd applauded, and he headed toward the exit, bypassing the spelling bee's Kleenex supplies.

Even-tempered and dry-eyed, he hurried toward the hallway and patiently fielded questions from a television news crew.

The last word had blindsided him, he said.

"I thought I knew [it], but I didn't, I guess," he said.

His mother, Sara Rana, said she was puzzled by the loss.

For six months, her son had studied Webster's Third New International Dictionary, poring over the 12-pound, 2,800-page book each day for roughly two hours.

"He worked hard for this competition. Hours and hours," she said. "[To lose] on such a simple word, it's kind of heartbreaking. ... [I'm] sorry we couldn't fulfill what Arkansas was expecting of us."

In an earlier phone interview, Haris' father, Javed Rana, said he was proud that his son had advanced to the national competition.

"He worked hard, you know. He's very smart, very intelligent, his memory's very sharp," he said.

Haris' parents immigrated to the United States from Pakistan and have lived in Fort Smith for 16 years.

Their three children were all born in Arkansas.

Their firstborn won the state spelling bee in Conway on March 4, outlasting 60 other competitors during a 3½-hour, 15-round bout.

Haris claimed the Arkansas title after correctly spelling "chasuble," an outer garment worn by Christian priests.

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Haris was one of 291 contestants in the 2017 Scripps National Spelling Bee, held in the Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center this week.

Of those, 259 survived the initial round.

The morning round was easier, Haris said, because the words were drawn from a list of 400 nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs that had been distributed to contestants ahead of time.

One of those words was "Keynesian," which means "of or relating to the advocacy of monetary and fiscal programs by government to increase employment," according to the spellling bee

It didn't faze Haris. "I knew I knew it," he said afterward.

But he stalled, at first, letting the word percolate.

"A lot of spellers can get overconfident and spell too quickly, so I took my time and asked questions so I could remember it better," he said.

Haris sought the word's definition and its language of origin. (It's English and was coined in honor of British economist John Maynard Keynes.) The teenager also asked the bee's "official pronouncer," Jacques Bailly, to use the term in a sentence.

Bailly, a former National Spelling Bee champion, quickly obliged.

Forty-five seconds after stepping to the microphone, Haris offered the spelling.

"K-E-Y-N-E-S-I-A-N," he said, finishing with more than a minute to spare.

"That's correct," one of the judges replied, as the audience applauded.

Although he appeared unruffled, Haris said it had been stressful.

"It was really scary spelling in front of everyone," Haris said. "It was a lot of pressure, but I just took a deep breath and calmed myself down."

Words in subsequent rounds were taken from the Merriam-Webster Unabridged, which contains hundreds of thousands of entries, tournament officials said.

"It was kind of unpredictable," Haris said.

Overall, 71 spellers were eliminated in Wednesday's afternoon round.

The remaining field of 188 contestants was further winnowed based on the scores of a multiple choice test that was given Tuesday.

Today's finals, with 40 competitors, will begin with a live broadcast on ESPN-2 starting at 9 a.m. ESPN will air the last of the finals rounds beginning at 7:30 p.m.

Metro on 06/01/2017

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