Kane County Student Is 1 Of 2 From IL To Advance To National Spelling Bee Semifinals

KANE COUNTY, IL — A Kane County student advanced to the semifinals of the 100th anniversary Scripps National Spelling Bee.

Yahya Mohammed, who attends Larsen Middle School in Elgin, made it through the quarterfinals to advance to the semifinals Wednesday night. He previously competed in 2024, tying for 60th place.

Mohammed is one of two students from Illinois — joining Beatriz Whitford-Rodriguez from Chicago — to make it to the semifinals. He is sponsored by the Kane County Regional Office of Education, located in Geneva.

The spelling bee will be broadcast on ION, which is available for free over the air and on most cable, satellite and streaming providers. The semifinals will begin at 7 p.m. Wednesday, and the finals will be live at the same time Thursday.

The Scripps National Spelling Bee is an end-of-the-school-year tradition that began in 1925, when nine newspapers held spelling bees and the winners squared off for the spelling title. Since then, millions of spellers have participated in the bee, which is held just outside the nation’s capital, at a convention center on the banks of the Potomac River.

Although the bee itself is 100 years old, this is the 97th national spelling competition. It was paused from 1943 to 1945 because of World War II and again in 2020 because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

This year's champion will be the 110th because the bee ended in a two-way tie several times and an eight-way tie in 2019.

The participants, all under the age of 15, must not have passed beyond the eighth grade. To make it to the quarterfinals in Maryland, the 243 spellers prevailed first in local spelling bees.

At least one speller from each of the 50 states and the District of Columbia qualified for the bee, along with students from U.S. territories Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands and the Northern Mariana Islands; and from Canada, the Bahamas, Germany, Ghana, Kuwait and Nigeria.

Sixty spellers were eliminated in Tuesday's preliminary spelling and vocabulary rounds, leaving 183 to take a written spelling and vocabulary test ahead of Wednesday's quarterfinals. Another 84 were eliminated by the test, leaving 99 quarter-finalists on the stage Wednesday morning.

The Associated Press contributed reporting.

Editor's note: This article previously stated Yahya Mohammed is from Geneva. His school, Larsen Middle School, is located in Elgin. Patch apologizes for the error.