The Mitby Theatre on the campus of Madison Area Technical College is becoming a very familiar place for Verona’s Luis Vincent Bautista. Almost every time he is there, his family returns home with a spelling bee trophy.
On Feb. 17, Bautista joined 37 other Madison students – from grades three through eight, each who previously won a school spelling bee – on the theater’s stage to participate in the 2024 Madison All-City Spelling Bee competition.
Among the contestants at last month’s event was two-time returning city spelling bee champion Aiden Devmina Wijeyakulasuriya, of Middleton, who came to the annual event as the heavy favorite to win the city title. He had been a competitive contestant each year and was the two-time reigning champion hoping to win for the third consecutive time. Wijeyakulasuriya has vied for spelling bee titles since age 8.
When it got to the two final contestants, Wijeyakulasuriya, age 13, incorrectly spelled “spectatoritis,” a word meaning “excessive indulgence in forms of amusement in which one is a passive spectator rather than an active participant.” He was anything but passive after successfully spelling word after word to attempt to reclaim the city title – until round 30.
After Wijeyakulasuriya missed the word, Bautista, age 13, correctly spelled it and the next word, “menudo,” a type of Mexican soup, to win the competition. He and Wijeyakulasuriya were among a few returning city spelling bee entrants to participate again this year.
“On that last word, I really didn’t know it, so I had to do my best on it,” Bautista told a reporter after his victory.
Bautista’s victory came after 30 rounds of onstage spelling and grammar quizzes, with the last 12 rounds taking place between just himself and Wijeyakulasuriya. Bautista is the son of Sheila and Ryndon Negrillo Bautista of Verona.
Wijeyakulasuriya, who has lived in Middleton since July 2013, is the son of Sameera and Dinusha Wijeyakulasuriya. He is currently an eighth grader at Blessed Sacrament School in Madison, which qualified him to advance to the Madison spelling bee.
After winning the Madison spelling bee last year, Wijeyakulasuriya advanced to the Wisconsin Badger State Spelling Bee in March where he won the 2023 state title after correctly spelling “krausen.” Krausen means “to add strong newly fermenting wort to beer.”
That word, krausen, came from a 10-word written test to decide the champion. Coincidentally, unbeknownst to many in the theater last month, it was the same word he correctly spelled during round 17 of the city spelling bee.
Wijeyakulasuriya is the first Middleton resident to have won the Wisconsin spelling bee, which began in 1911 – the earliest known year of its existence.
Last May, Wijeyakulasuriya returned to the Scripps National Spelling Bee in Maryland where he tied for 21st place among 229 contestants. Ironically, he did not lose by misspelling a word, but rather incorrectly guessing an answer to a multiple choice question during a vocabulary round.
Wijeyakulasuriya answered “to disguise its true nature” when asked by veteran national spelling Bee pronouncer and 1980 national winner Dr. Jacques A. Bailly, “If you obviate something, what does that mean?” The correct answer was “make it unnecessary.”
Wijeyakulasuriya previously participated in the national spelling bee in 2019 where he tied for 51st place as Wisconsin’s at-large RSVBee contestant – an invitational program for qualified entrants who previously competed at the state level.
For the third consecutive year, the Wisconsin State Journal – the sponsoring organization of the annual Madison spelling bee – will grant the top three student spellers advancement to the state contest, spelling bee director Jane McMahon, of Poynette, said. McMahon previously operated spelling bee contests in Columbia County.
The Wisconsin State Journal has sponsored the annual state and city spelling bee competitions each year since 1949.
Bautista, an eighth grader at St. Maria Goretti School in Madison, will join Wijeyakulasuriya at the 2024 Badger State Spelling Bee along with second runner-up Katherine Claire Moore, 13. Moore is an eighth grader at Spring Harbor Middle School.
Madison spelling bee runner-up Aiden Wijeyakulasuriya, left, poses with city champion Luis Vincent Bautista, center, along with the second alternate, Katherine Claire Moore, right, at the conclusion of the Madison All-City Spelling Bee on Feb. 17.
The state spelling competition will take place at 1 p.m. on Saturday, March 16 at the Mitby Theatre. Ironically, Moore, a vegetarian who previously competed in the 2020 city spelling bee, misspelled the word “piccata” – a word meaning “thin slices of meat, such as veal” – during round 18 of last month’s competition.
Over 45 contestants representing Wisconsin’s 12 Cooperative Educational Service Agency (CESA) districts are expected to enter the 2024 state spelling bee. The three Madison advancing finalists will be among at least eight students from CESA District 2 – the others resulting from winning a regional spelling bee contest that was held earlier this year.
Bautista, who competed in the 2022 Wisconsin spelling bee, is the third member of his family to have won the Madison All-City Spelling Bee – each at the Mitby Theatre.
Bautista’s older brother, Martius, currently a pre-med sophomore at Lake Forest College in Illinois, won the Madison spelling bee four consecutive times (2014-2017) and was the 2017 state spelling champion. The middle sibling, Francesca (Frankie), was the 2018 city champion who also competed at the Scripps National Spelling Bee in 2018 as an RSVBee national entry. Both attended the Madison spelling bee contest last month to witness their brother win the city spelling trophy.
The Bautistas are the first family to have three siblings as winners of the Madison spelling bee. The Wisconsin Badger State Spelling Bee will be staged at the Mitby Theatre, 1701 Wright St., Madison. The theater was named after Norman P. Mitby who served as district director from 1960 through June of 1988. He died on April 13, 1999.
The 2024 Badger State Spelling Bee is a free event and open to the public.
