Meet the winners of the 2025 Miami Herald Spelling Bee from Miami-Dade and Broward

Miami Herald

26-02-2025

The waiting room was full of jitters on Wednesday morning as some of South Florida's best spellers and their families prepared for the 85th annual Miami Herald Spelling Bee at the Charles F. Dodge City Center Pembroke Pines.
Some students were going over their lists of words. Siblings took naps on the tables.
The annual spelling bee features two contests – 25 students from Broward County compete in the morning and in the afternoon 25 champion spellers from Miami-Dade/Monroe Counties go head to head. The winner from each bee will go on to compete at the end of May in the Scripps National Spelling Bee in Washington, DC., a coveted competition celebrating 100 years this year. Last year, the winner of the national competition won $50,000 among other smaller prizes.
The local winners receive a trophy and a $100 gift card to Books and Books. All 50 competitors took home a dictionary, courtesy of Books and Books.
Before the Broward bee began, the spellers sat on the stage and did some stretching. Alana Kaplan, the head judge and moderator, asked the kids to make a funny face to get their wiggles out.
The Miami Herald Spelling Bee is serious business. If spellers need to attend the bathroom during the bee, they must be escorted by a designated person. They were asked to take off their smart watches and to take a pledge of integrity.
Photo gallery: 85th Miami Herald Spelling Bee
'Do not worry about spaces, dashes or capitalization,' explained Kaplan, whose daughter Simone was the bee's pronouncer for the Miami-Dade competition. Simone was the runner-up at the Scripps National Bee in 2019.
'All you have to do is spell the word in the right order,' she reassured the spellers.
Several hours and many rounds
After 11 rounds of competition, Hadi Abbasi, a 6th-grader from Franklin Academy Pembroke Pines Middle School, won the Broward bee with the word 'teleprompter.'
'I thought they were going to give me an impossible word, so I was very relieved when I heard a word that I can spell,' said Abbasi, as he stood to the side of the stage and posed for photos.
Abbasi enjoyed the process of preparing for the spelling bee. 'It taught me the history of the words and how they are formed,' he said.
Nikhil Sha of Palmetto Middle School won the Miami-Dade and Monroe County bee by spelling the word 'bodacious,' meaning remarkable and noteworthy.
After receiving the award, Sha posed for photos as strings of colorful paper confetti were launched into the air.
'The explosion of confetti caught me off guard,' said Sha.
Sha said this is the fourth year he has tried to win the spelling bee, and that he approached studying by looking at groups of words and noticing their similarities. That helped him with his second to last word which was 'zygolobous.'
He was able to spell 'zygolobous' after asking for the part of speech, realizing it was an adjective, and knowing that many adjectives end in 'ous.'
Sha's mom, Aarthy Chandrasekaran said that today was a stressful day, but that he did work hard to prepare. 'He's been reading a lot of books, so I am super happy and excited,' she said.
The Miami-Dade and Monroe spelling bee went on for over 3 hours, with 14 rounds of competitions.
By round four, there were just nine spellers left. As the number of students remaining in the competition dwindled, the spellers looked around at the empty seats, realizing they were getting further along in the competition, and getting progressively more nervous.
During the sixth round, there were long dramatic pauses and time seemed to stand still as spellers asked for detailed definitions, and pronunciation of words before attempting to spell it out.
The joy of competition
During the bee there were audible sighs of relief after a word was spelled correctly and faces of shock when they were told that the word was spelled incorrectly.
One frustrated student walked off the stage before the judge could give the correct spelling of the word.
David Furman, a student from Aventura City of Excellence Charter School clenched his fist in excitement every time he correctly spelled a word. Toward the end of the competition, he even patted himself on the back while walking back to his seat from the microphone. Furman ended up 2nd place in the Miami-Dade and Monroe competition.
The runner-up for Broward was Dahana Destinoble, an 8th grader from Sunrise Middle School. Her mom gave her a big kiss after learning she came in second. 'Oh, I'm so proud of you!' said her mother.
Although other spellers were not so lucky as to win, they still gave it a shot.
Ivanshi Gadani, 13, competed in the spelling bee for the second year in a row. The 8th grader from West Glades Middle School says spelling bees are a nice stress reliever. Unfortunately, Gadani spelled her first word wrong. She was asked to spell 'ragwort,' which she was told was a homonym, a word which can easily be confused with other words.
During the Bee, one speller yelled 'yes!' into the mic after spelling 'adnate' correctly, sparking laughter from the audience.
Like clockwork, the parents erupted into applause after each speller completed their word, regardless of whether it was spelled correctly.
The Miami Herald Spelling Bee also had a special visit from a representative of the Scripps National Spelling competition, Bryan Witt.
'It's so fun to watch the joyful expression on their face when they get it right,' he said.