Preliminaries - Rounds 2 and 3/Predicting a Champion

Tomorrow, Preliminaries continue, and it is on ESPN3. 275 will take the stage tomorrow. Still, I would rather be there than watch at home. I do not have any clear favorites this year, because I am cheering for every single speller. The batch is strong this year, and it will be hard to predict a champion. Every year, it is hard to predict a champion, but when there is a certain group that I predict, at least one of them wins.

I did a good job guessing from 2008-2010.

2008 - four-peats and five-peats (Champion: Sameer Mishra - four-peat)
2009 - 2008 Returning Championship Finalists (Champion: Kavya Shivashankar - fourth place in 2008)
2010 - 2009 Returning Championship Finalists (Champion: Anamika Veeramani - fifth place in 2009)

My guesses were messed up in 2007, when Kunal Sah, Samir Patel, Jonathan Horton, Tia Thomas, and Matthew Evans, were eliminated. 2006, I expected Kerry Close to win, because she was a five-peat! In 2005, I had no guesses, because that was my first year to watch the Bee.

My 2011 Champion Predictions:

• 2010 Returning Championship Finalists (Laura Newcombe, Julianna Canabal-Rodriguez, and Joanna Ye)
• Four-peats (Rahul Malayappan, Nicholas Rushlow, and Julianna Canabal-Rodriguez)
• Canadians (Laura Newcombe, Veronica Penny, and Graham Abraham)
• Spellers who were close to championship finals (Sukanya Roy*, Julia Denniss, Arvind Mahankali, and Grace Remmer)

*In 2009, Sukanya was eliminated in Round 6, which was one round away from championship finals, but in 2010, she was eliminated in Round 5.

Tomorrow, I will have my notebook ready to spell with you.