A 13-year-old Indian boy from an international school in Tokyo was eliminated in Wednesday's semifinals of the U.S. national spelling bee but said he was satisfied he came so far in America's largest and longest-running competition of its kind.
Shantanu Edgaonkar, an eighth-grader at Global Indian International School in Tokyo, performed well in the semifinals of the 2017 Scripps National Spelling Bee, but failed to become one of the 40 contenders for Thursday's finals. He did not rack up enough points from a written spelling and vocabulary test given Tuesday.
"I tried my best so I'm satisfied about that," said Edgaonkar, who won the eighth Japan Times Bee in March. "I feel really good with what I've done until now because I'm representing an entire country (Japan) and I also feel happy that I've made all my teachers and parents proud about my achievements."