Two eighth-grade students will represent Wisconsin this week in the Scripps National Spelling Bee.
Nethraa Muthupandiyaraja and Aiden Wijeyakulasuriya, both 13, will compete Tuesday in the preliminary round of the bee hosted in National Harbor, Maryland. Both have been putting in long hours wielding prep books, vocabulary apps and posters of Latin and Greek roots in an effort to memorize as many words as they can.
Aiden won the Badger State Spelling Bee, which the Wisconsin State Journal sponsors, March 16. Nethraa was runner-up.