Date May 24–28, 2015 | ||
Location Gaylord National Resort & Convention Center, National Harbor, Maryland Winner Gokul Venkatachalam
Vanya Shivashankar
(co-winners) Residence Chesterfield, Missouri (Venkatachalam)
Olathe, Kansas (Shivashankar) Sponsor St. Louis Post-Dispatch (Venkatachalam)
The Olathe News (Shivashankar) Winning word nunatak /scherenschnitte | ||
The 88th Scripps National Spelling Bee was held at the Gaylord National Resort & Convention Center in National Harbor, Maryland from May 24–28, 2015. Students competed for a prize valued at $38,600 coming from various companies.
For the second year in a row the outcome was a tie, with Gokul Venkatachalam and Vanya Shivashankar ending up as co-winners once the Bee's dictionary was emptied once again. Vanya was the first sibling of a previous winner to win; her sister Kavya won in 2009. Vanya Shivashankar from Olathe, Kansas and Gokul Venkatachalam from Chesterfield, Missouri won the bee, making the 88th Bee the thirteenth in the past seventeen bees to have an Indian-American champion. Other finalists included Cole Shafer-Ray, Snehaa Ganesh Kumar, Siddharth Krishnakumar, Dev Jaiswal, Tejas Muthusamy, Paul Keaton, Sylvie Lamontagne, and Siyona Mishra.
Forty-nine spellers from the original field made it to the final day of competition.