STAFF REPORT

Make it eight spelling bee crowns in a row for Corona’s Randhawa family.

Avijeet Randhawa captured a second consecutive Riverside County Spelling Bee trophy on Thursday, March 28.

The Auburndale Intermediate School eighth-grader is the latest Randhawa to spell his way to the championship.

His older sisters, Lara and Aisha, each dominated the county bee, with Lara winning the 2021 and 2022 titles and Aisha winning in 2016, 2017, 2018, and 2019. The 2020 bee was canceled because of the pandemic.

Avijeet won the three-hour fight on Thursday in downtown Riverside by accurately spelling “crescendo” in round 19. From May 28 to May 30, he will now attend the Scripps National Spelling Bee in Maryland.

Fifth-grader Victoria Michael-Taiwo of Lake Elsinore’s Tuscany Hills Elementary School finished in second place.

Twenty-seven elementary and middle school kids from public, charter, and private schools competed in the 46th annual bee held in Riverside County.

The two co-champions, Srikanth Satheesh Kumar of Heritage Intermediate School in Fontana and Shrey Parikh of Day Creek Intermediate School in Rancho Cucamonga are both graduates of the Etiwanda School District.

According to a news release, Shrey, a sixth-grader, won the competition on Wednesday, March 13, at San Bernardino Valley College by accurately spelling the term “rarefaction.”

After accurately spelling the word “recrudescent,” eighth-grader Srikanth became co-champion, according to the San Bernardino County Superintendent of Schools.