JACKSON, Miss. – Yolanda Ni is the winner of the 2019 Mississippi Spelling Bee. Ni is an eighth-grade student at Oak Grove Middle School in the Lamar County School District. She spelled the word “apothecary” for the win.
The first runner-up was Soyeon Park, an eighth-grade student at Armstrong Middle School in the Starkville Oktibbeha School District. Park won the Mississippi Spelling Bee in 2017.
Mississippi Public Broadcasting broadcast the spelling bee live on MPB Television as well as online. The event was sponsored by the Mississippi Association of Educators and took place at the MPB Auditorium, 3825 Ridgewood Road in Jackson.
Ni, who was competing for the fourth time in the state bee, will vie for a chance to become the nation’s top speller during the 92nd Scripps National Spelling Bee in Washington, D.C. in May. The winner of the national competition will emerge from a pool of 11 million spelling bee participants.
