Sequoia Middle School eighth grader Isla Jay placed second in the Tulare County Spelling Bee on Thursday.
Returning champion, Sarvadnya Kadam, an eighth-grade student at Oak Grove Elementary School in Visalia, captured the 2025 Tulare County Spelling Championship by spelling “Castilian,”the dialect of Spanish spoken in Castile, which is standard Spanish. Sarvadnya won the championship in the 20th round.
In 26 years of the competition, he's only the second student to win three times. Sarvadnya will represent Tulare County at the Scripps National Spelling Bee in May.
There was a tie for third place between Mica Rivera, an eighth grader at St. Aloysius School in Tulare, and Ava Parrett an eighth grader at Liberty School in Tulare.
Jay was eliminated on the word calendula. He misspelled the word with two lls callendula.
Elementary and middle school students from 98 Tulare County schools competed at the Tulare County Office of Education.
The spelling master was Scot Hillman, chairman emeritus of JDH in Tulare.
This year’s judges were lead judge Carlyn Lambert, retired Visalia Unified administrator;
Supervisor Amy Shuklian, Tulare County Board of Supervisors; and Tim Hire, Tulare County Superintendent of Schools.
Hillman and Lambert have served the spelling championship in their respective roles since its creation in 1999. The words the top spellers had were as follows
Sarvadnya Kadam’s words (First Place): breathtaking, votive, escalator, agalma, diatribe, pendragon, asado, officinal, stricture, leviathan, mecca, gingivitis, rebarbative, desertification, wobbulator, drupiferous, fardel, catalepsy, bulgogi, Castilian.
Isla Jay’s words (Second Place): puckish, recanted, sconce , bilbo, impoverish, flittern, oblique, delectable, frass, churchianity, impetus, kanji, krypton, pelf, interred, facundity, castellated, euphonious, calendula (misspelled as “callendula”)
Mica Rivera’s words (Third Place Tie): afroth, haphazard, alienate, nonchalance, conclave, equinox, confabulation, lutrine, exposition, sophomoric (misspelled as “sophmoric”)
Ava Parrett’s words (Third Place Tie): fribble, wield, embezzlement, birria, astronaut, demonstrative, dromic, nocive, zeppelin, QWERTY (misspelled as “quirty”).