Denver 7th-grader wins Colorado State Spelling Bee

By The AP
Sunday, March 17, 2013

DENVER — A seventh-grader from Denver’s Hamilton Middle School has won the Colorado State Spelling Bee by correctly spelling the word oriel, which is a large bay window that projects from a wall.

Twelve-year-old Himanvi Kopuri defeated 39 other spellers Saturday and will represent Colorado in the Scripps National Spelling Bee in Washington, D.C., in May. She didn’t miss any words on the 50-word written test she took to qualify for the state bee.

Himanvi, who has appeared in the competition twice before, told The Denver Post she was pretty confident at the end because she had studied the word oriel before.

Second place went to Megan Takeda, an eighth-grader at Castle Rock Middle School.