A Spelling Champ Whose E-U-O-N-Y-M Should Have Been 'Joy'

Who could forget it? A 13-year-old girl at the 1997 Scripps National Spelling Bee is poised to receive her final word. If she spells it correctly, the championship is hers. The judges say the word, and it takes her a moment or two to digest. Then, slowly and loudly, she shrieks out every letter, “E-U-O-N-Y-M!,” before leaping up and down -- a made-for-YouTube moment if ever there was one.

Almost 15 years later, Rebecca Sealfon, the last New Yorker to win the National Spelling Bee, can remember the feeling. “I heard the word,” she said, speaking in a slow monotone, “and I knew it was all over.”

The intense attention she has received after her victory -- an article on the parody Web site Uncyclopedia, a character on “South Park” inspired by her, and YouTube mash-ups and remixes of that winning moment -- was "mostly fun,” she said. She was invited to interesting events and met many politicians and public figures.

But there was a catch. “I had to mind my p’s and q’s in many ways,” she said, and the media scrutiny “went on for months, if not years.”

Ms. Sealfon, now 28, lives near the Brooklyn Bridge and and is focused entirely on her own venture, ResearchMat.ch, a Web site that connects students and professors for collaboration on research projects. Her life these days is a departure from the frenzy that followed her spelling bee win, after that magic moment when she realized, "I know that one": euonym, "an appropriate name for a person, place or thing."

She was home-schooled at the time, but graduated from Stuyvesant High School, went on to receive her undergraduate degree in biology from Princeton University and then earned two master’s degrees, one in biology from Duke University and a subsequent one in computer science from Columbia University.

She no longer keeps up with the labyrinthine world of words, and so isn’t quite spelling-match fit. But she does have advice for the New Yorkers who will be heading to the nationals in Washington in June. “Use the Internet,” she said.

Preparation has changed a lot since her time, she said, because nowadays most winners go online and study the techniques of those who came before them.

Indeed, Alexis Tang, a sixth grader from the Spence School, who was one of the winners of the Daily News Spelling Bee in Manhattan this week -- the other was Arvind Mahankali, a seventh grader from Junior High School 74/Nathaniel Hawthorne, who had already won it twice -- said she had emulated a past national champion’s strategy of making letters on her palm while spelling.

After she won the citywide spelling bee, Ms. Sealfon clocked 15 hours of practice each week until the national finals. Over the years, the preparation for the competition has gotten even more rigorous.

But the pressure, even back then, was immense, she said.

“If you’re that age and you put in so much work," she said, "then there is the feeling that you have to try.”

Though she’s immersed in a life of databases and developers, she is sometimes reminded of her erstwhile fame. “I’ll be walking up from 96th Street and I’ll get recognized,” she said.

Once, after she had sent out a mass e-mail to academics promoting her Web site, she received a reply asking her if she was the spelling bee champion.

It wasn’t, after all, an ordinary victory. Even in Washington, she said, the press lavished coverage on her.

“There are so many other things going on in the world,” she said, “but on that day, it was all about me.”