Laasya Mohan, a fourth-grader at Floris Elementary School in Herndon, won the 2026 Fairfax County Spelling Bee on Sunday (March 22).
Mohan, who is 9, and first runner-up Aadhya Vijayakumar, 13, an eighth-grader at Rocky Run Middle School in Chantilly, will both advance to the Scripps National Spelling Bee in Washington in late May.
The second runner-up was Katherine Song, 12, a sixth-grader at Sangster Elementary School in Springfield.
The bee, sponsored by the Fairfax County Council PTA, was held at Lake Braddock Secondary School and included 90 spellers who qualified by virtue of winning elementary and middle school spelling bees in Fairfax and the city of Alexandria.
The event began with a written test of 15 words for all spellers, followed by an oral spelling round. The spellers who successfully completed the oral round and had the highest scores on the written test advanced to the finals.
In addition to the champion and the two runners-up, the other finalists were:
- Elliot Smith, Douglas MacArthur ES, Alexandria City
- Thomas Snyder, Jefferson-Houston PreK-8 IB School, Alexandria City
- Aiden Zhang, Haycock Elementary School, Falls Church
- Aprameyan Ramanujan, Spring Hill ES, McLean
- Ila Pruitt, Compass Homeschool Enrichment, Herndon
- Nam Dang, Springfield Estates ES, Springfield
- Humza Rawn, Al Fatih Academy, Reston
- Farhan Sulbigar, Oak Hill ES, Herndon
- Abigail Yoon, Poplar Tree ES, Chantilly
- Mehika Misra, Bull Run ES, Centreville
- Swara Vadlamani, Longfellow MS, Falls Church
- Catherine Uzzell, Langston Hughes MS, Reston
- Aryav Gurjar, Rachel Carson MS, Herndon
- Sarah Chawla, Al Asr Microschool, Fairfax
- Joaquin Arellano, Saint Rita School, Alexandria
The finals began with an oral vocabulary round, which eliminated five spellers, and oral spelling continued for 15 more rounds, with the last eight rounds between the final two spellers. Both spellers failed to correctly spell a championship word until Mohan succeeded on her second attempt with “béarnaise,” meaning “hollandaise sauce seasoned (as with minced shallots, tarragon, and chervil) and served with meat or fish.”
Other words the last two spellers spelled correctly included “biquintile,” “ganosis,” “pelmatogram,” “nomocracy” and “teliospore.”
Image via Google Maps. This article was written by FFXnow’s news partner InsideNoVa.com and republished with permission. Sign up for InsideNoVa.com’s free email subscription today.
