KEY POINTS:
Twelve young spellers from around the country will compete in Wellington tomorrow for the title of New Zealand's champion speller.
As well as the title, the winner of the New Zealand Vegemite Spelling Bee final will represent New Zealand at the 81st US Scripps Spelling Bee in Washington DC later this year.
Event manager Janet Lucas said it would be interesting to see who took out the New Zealand event.
While equal numbers of boys and girls entered the spelling bee, the champion speller in the three years the competition had been running had always been a girl.
The opposite had been so in the United States, where since 2000 only one girl had taken the title, in 2006.
The pronouncer at this weekend's final is author and former lawyer Hamish McDouall, who shot to prominence in 1989 when he won television game show Sale of the Century, followed by Mastermind in 1990 on his expert topic of the life and works of David Bowie.
The New Zealand event is open to Year 9 students, under the age of 16 and eligible for a passport.
The finalists are:
- Edward Pleasance, James Hargest College, Invercargill
- Whina Pomana, Blue Mountain College, Tapanui
- Violet Penty, Greymouth High School, Greymouth
- Abbas Nazari, Burnside High School, Christchurch
- Nazarene Garmonsway, Orewa College, Orewa
- Hugo Carnell, Western Springs College, Auckland
- James Coventry, Macleans College, Auckland
- Thomas North, Hamilton Boys' High School, Hamilton
- Declan Ronayne, Tauranga Boys' High School, Tauranga
- Rose Galletly, Samuel Marsden, Wellington
- Tamra Lindsay, St Orans College, Wellington
- Shreyas Ramasubramanian, Scots College, Wellington
- NZPA
