Friday, May. 29, 2009

City of Champions adds another

Olathe, which likes to refer to itself as the City of Champions, added another name to the long list Thursday night in Washington, D.C.

Although long known for its prowess in athletics, Olathe’s latest champion won her title with smarts rather than brawn.

Kavya Shivashankar, a 13-year-old from California Trail Junior High School, is the 2009 Scripps National Spelling Bee champion.

This was Kavya’s final trip to the national Bee, and it seems as if we’ve watched her grow up in the district bee and on national television. She’s made four trips to the national event, never finishing lower than 10th.

We’ve watched, and perhaps learned a new skill, as she used her finger to scribble the spelling of a word on the palm of her hand. We’ve felt the joy and the tinge of sadness as she finished in a tie for fourth last year.

Most of all, we appreciated the look of a soon-to-be champion as the hint of a smile briefly crossed her face Thursday night as she determined she knew how to spell “laodicean.”

Certainly many other Olathe students have performed well on national academic stages. The national spotlight recently has found Olathe Northwest’s robotics program and Olathe North’s culinary arts program. The list is much too long for this space.

The light that shines on the national spelling bee, however, comes from across the world. Millions of viewers, watching and listening in many different languages, now know of our city thanks to Kavya. That’s the type of positive publicity that communities covet but know they never can afford.

And best of all? The national media has learned how to correctly pronounce Olathe.

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