Spelling Bee champ wins title, then takes on NewsNation
(NewsNation) — When Harini Logan was in second grade, she watched in awe as Gokul Venkatachalam and Vanya Shivashankar became the 2015 Scripps National Spelling Bee co-champions.
Fast forward to 2015, and Logan, now 14, is now the 2022 Spelling Bee champion, spelling 22 words correctly during a 90-second spell-off to beat runner-up Vikram Raju.
And she credits some of her success to seeing the spelling bee for the first time.
The eighth-grader from San Antonio, Texas, remembers seeing past competitors spell challenging words, sometimes in languages, she’d never seen before, with ease and confidence.
“I was just so impressed by them, and I told my parents, I really wanted to do the spelling bee,” she said Friday on NewsNation’s “Morning in America.” “So after that, the next year, I really started to begin beginning to get involved in spelling bees. So really, that’s what sort of drove me.”
Logan’s parents also helped her envision, and then achieve, her own success at the bee.
“When you think about something, and you’re manifesting it, it’ll happen,” Logan, who won more than $50,000 in cash and prizes, said. “So definitely something my mom also encouraged me to do is like, just think about it. Just tell yourself like, I’ll go, I’ll give my it best. I’ll be proud of how far I’ve come.”
She may have won the National Bee, but Logan wasn’t finished spelling yet. During Logan’s appearance on “Morning in America,” NewsNation anchor Adrienne Bankert asked her to spell the word “Worcestershire.”
Logan, using her training from the bee, asked for a definition. She didn’t end up spelling Worcestershire right, but Logan was close, only adding another “h” to the word.
However, this may have been due to Bankert’s mispronunciation of the oft-mispronounced sauce.
“I might be saying it wrong,” Bankert admitted as the two laughed together.