She won the Top Spelling Bee in Tampa Bay. Then the real battle began.

Heading to the Tampa Bay area spelling bees in February, Amara Chepuri was considered a major competitor.

The Manatee County sixth graders finished in the top three of the previous year and fell to the word ephectic after reaching the 2024 National Bee quarterfinals. Several other local spellings were newcomers and gave Amara the region’s representative at the national event in May.

12-year-old Amara was not disappointed and surpassed everything else to win in the Championship Ward Saschey. However, questions about her eligibility arose during the spell. She was unable to hold the trophy.

Four days later, the Rays Foundation, which sponsored the event, announced that runner-up Vlada Kojevnikova, a sixth-year student at the Pinellas Academy of Mathematics and Sciences, would go to the nation instead.

Since then, Chepris has been fighting the decision.

Going to the National Spelling Bee is a big deal. Over the past 20 years, it has attracted attention for famous documentaries and attracted a large television audience. Speller spends daily training on events, practicing everything from the origins of words to round lightning strategies.

This year, the Nationals have a special charm. It’s a 100th anniversary bee, and sponsor Scripps is all out with activities and celebrations.

And with the past two champions Dev Shah and Bruhat Soma coming from the Tampa Bay area, we’re even more excited about whether the area can have a rare three-peat. Amara’s parents considered it a clear possibility.

“She may have won,” said her father, Anant Chepuri. “She’s one of the best spellers in Florida.”

To them, seeing her bystanders seemed like injustice. Especially the way things fell.

There they consulted with an attorney and sued her to the charter school at the University of Florida State University Amara, which held her local bee. They sent requests for reconsideration to the Rays Foundation and Scripps. They are seeking intervention from the Florida Department of Education and are considering seeking court order mediation.

“My daughter didn’t have the due process rights she deserves,” Chepuri said. “It looks like all of these organizations. They don’t care about students. They don’t want to hear the truth.”

Scripps officials see it in a completely different way. They reviewed all the material and discussions they received in relation to the situation and said they continued to arrive at the same location.

“We were consistent in communicating with them,” said Cory Loeffler, executive director of Scripps National Spelling Bee. “Our decisions are standing.”

***

At the heart of the conflict is the exhausted words. It’s not spelling, it’s its meaning.

Before the school-level contest, Amara asked teacher Billy Joe Williams to clarify the list of rules and lists of words he received to study.

“If the list is accidentally exhausted, are there any tiebreakers?” Amara wrote. “And what words can you give if you have a tiebreaker?”

The teacher replied that the school does not have a tiebreaker. However, the school had an additional 150 words that competitors haven’t studied “if they tire of the list,” Williams wrote in an email that Amara’s family shared with the Tampa Bay Times.

Amara and her family mean that they will use the entire list published before schools go to the next set.

However, during the bees, the judges skipped some words after it was revealed that the two final spellers remembered the list. Loeffler said that is a common practice for spelling bees.

Off the list, Amara made a disability mistake, and the rest of the students got equality right.

Chepris argued that the school ignored assurances for Amara that the main list would be exhausted. They challenged the outcome. That meant that the end result was fluid.

While awaiting a hearing from the school, they also looked for other ways to keep Amara in the competition. The movement made their situation worse.

***

This is where another word fell into controversy: disqualification.

Spellers participating in the regional spelling bee will obtain a copy of the rules. Under eligibility, if spells are “disqualified at any level” in the local bee program, he or she “may not seek progress through enrollment in another local partner or another school.”

Chepris argues that Amara was never officially disqualified from the school’s spelt bees as she pleaded for the outcome as the deadline to enter the area approached and because she had not received a hearing. That logic led them to reason that Amara should be able to participate in another qualifying event.

Not wanting to miss her chance, Amara turned to her homeschool cooperatives and tried to represent them. She received the qualifying test as a speller for Infinity Academy. This helped her with several additional classes and scored high enough to become one of the 36s on the local stage.

“She never pretended to represent any other school,” Chepuri said. “We did everything legally.”

A spokesman for Florida State University refuted that on January 29, almost two weeks before the area on February 8, the school refuted the school’s appeal to Chepris. The answer was clear.

“My hope is that I know and understand that all decisions are made as a team and are based on the conversations I have with the rulebook and Scripps.

The school understood the disappointment of the family, but state university spokesman Jamie Smith said Amara was not a winner and would not represent the school. In other words, she was disqualified.

“The students didn’t spell that word correctly,” Smith said in an interview. “That was the end of the process.”

But that’s not the case as far as Chepris is concerned.

***

Anant Chepuri has arrived at the Realman Exchange Community Centre for the local bees before her daughter. He brought a paper, just in case, documenting what he considered the perfect narrative behind Amara’s strange route to events.

Sitting in the stands, he downplayed the idea that his daughter would become the region’s third consecutive national award winner.

“She does it for fun. It’s not serious,” he said. “She just loves to spell out. She loves to compete too. Whether she wins or loses, she’s happy to be here.”

When he saw the field diminished, he approached the stage as if hoping to bring about victory. When Amara concluded his championship words, he didn’t have time to cheer. Scripps’ signature Tammy Riddle went his way and didn’t warn him all.

Williams, a teacher at Florida State University, emailed her halfway through the bee that Amara shouldn’t be there. It takes four days to organize things.

Adults discussed her eligibility, but Amara spoke about how much she enjoys spelling and words. She recognized the need to know more tricks, such as better understanding the sources of various prefixes and suffixes, to do well in the nationals.

She didn’t expect much to go all the time.

“I play tennis,” Amara said, showing the appeal of tennis on her necklace. “I don’t have time to speak more than three hours a day.”

But she was looking forward to trying it out.

***

After the verdict, Chepris called for a face-to-face discussion with school officials about the first bee, hoping that Amara would be named the co-champion. They left the meeting without making any changes.

Chepuri argued that teachers did not present all the facts about running out of word lists. If she had, the school leaders would have reached another decision and Scripps would not have congratulated the school on their actions, he said.

Since then, seeking a resolution for my daughter has become a nearly part-time job for biomedical professionals. He estimated he spent about two hours a day on bee problems.

“This was certainly a learning process,” he said in a text message. “I dealt with business negotiations and legal contracts, but there’s nothing like this in education.”

Much of the effort has only brought disappointment.

Shortly after being rejected by the school again, Chepuri wrote to the Rays Foundation, copying it to Scripps, asking him how he at least recognizes Amara as the winner of the area. Two days later, Scripps Senior Advisor Sadie Craig replied that he would ask his family to “stop and stop dealing with further bees, honeybee employees and affiliates, and bee community partners.”

Craig wrote that there is nothing to change the outcome as Amara remains ineligible.

Chepuri detailed all the problems he saw in the process and wrote “a fair and friendly solution that restores confidence in the integrity of competition” and detailed all the problems he saw in the process.

Soon he asked the Florida Department of Education to intervene. Spokesman Sidney Booker said the department “has no authority on this issue.”

***

Annoyed at every turn, Chepuri said he couldn’t believe that a honeybee-affiliated adult could treat a 12 year old like this. He said he would request mediation through the circuit court and also ask her school councillors to consider invalidating her disqualification.

At this point, he said there wasn’t much of a problem with her daughter going to the nation either. She is disillusioned with bees, he said, “What kind of child is it?” after seeing how her eligibility was handled.

His goal now is to ensure that Amara doesn’t feel like a victim. Using her experience to improve the system of future Spellers.

Scripps, he argues, should be hoping that the best Spellers compete in national challenges, and do not allow inconsistent local bee rules that affect children as Amara is.

“That’s not right,” he said. “They acted like she was a criminal from the start. … She doesn’t deserve anything like this. We’re doing our best as parents. That’s all we can do.”

Amara said she was happy that her parents had unconditionally supported her. She said that the bee official made her feel unfit, saying “I decided to find negligence with me” without asking for details.

“Who knows? I might have been the third person to win in Florida,” she said.

She said she would never fight for the bees again. However, for this year’s title, “I’ll see it, maybe,” some friends are still in the mix.

Honeybee CEO Loffler calls the situation “courageous” and says Amara is clearly working hard and her parents want to advocate for their child, of course.

But at the end of the day, she said the spelling bee was more than just spelling. It is also about sportsmanship, resilience, and the knowledge that preparation and luck play an equal role in competition as well as life.

“You may face words you didn’t know, and it won’t end in your day,” Roefler said. “If you’re just looking for the best speller in America, we’ll offer you one spell test.”