DATE: Friday, May 30, 1997                  TAG: 9705300732

SECTION: FRONT                   PAGE: A6   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS 

DATELINE: WASHINGTON                        LENGTH:   69 lines

``E-U-O-N-Y-M'' SPELLS VICTORY FOR BROOKLYN, N.Y., 13-YEAR-OLD THE HOME-SCHOOLED GIRL, WHO FINISHED 8TH LAST YEAR, SPELLED 22 WORDS CORRECTLY.

Convinced she was about to win the National Spelling Bee, 13-year-old Rebecca Sealfon shouted each letter of her last word into the microphone ``e-u-o-n-y-m'' and raised her arms high.

``Yeah!'' she screamed Thursday before balancing the trophy cup atop her head. The home-schooled teen-ager from Brooklyn, N.Y., placed eighth in the Scripps Howard-sponsored contest last year, but this year she was the champ, beating out Prem Murthy Trivedi, 11, of Howell, N.J.

``I knew I could figure it out,'' Rebecca said about ``euonym,'' defined as an appropriate name for a person, place or thing.

She won $5,000 - which she plans to save for college - books and other prizes, including a laptop computer. Prem earned $4,000 for his second-place finish. Sudheer Potru, 13, of Beverly Hills, Mich., won the $2,500 third-place prize.

``This was incredible luck,'' Rebecca said. ``There were words I did not know in every round.''

Rebecca was so nervous that she asked to wait her turn off stage. Rumors circulated that she was sick, but Rebecca said she was just nervous. ``I couldn't stand it,'' she said.

Jittery or not, she spelled 22 words correctly, including ``vaporetto,'' a small steamboat; ``hippogriff,'' a legendary animal; and ``bivouac,'' a temporary camp. Her first challenge was the 16-letter word ``sesquicentennial.''

Some of the 245 contestants spelled words by syllables. But Rebecca spelled letter-by-letter, often stopping after each one to cup her hands over her mouth. ``I was thinking what letter was next, and I was whispering the letter to myself,'' she said.

After each success, she raised her arms in the air and bounded off the stage.

For the last nine rounds, she battled only Prem, who was competing in the national spelling bee for the third time. Prem lost after he added an extra ``l'' to the word ``cortile,'' a courtyard.

Prem, who likes to study archaeology, swim and play chess and basketball, remained poised throughout the contest, calmly enunciating each letter. He was disappointed but said he'll try to qualify again next year.

Nerves began to fray Thursday as the two-day competition droned on, speller-by-speller, word-by-word, letter-by-letter. As the competition progressed, the words got harder and spellers were disqualified.

Evan Dowland Wade, 12, of Williamsburg, Va., was eliminated Thursday on the word ``videlicet,'' which means ``that is'' or ``namely.''

The contest was not without humor.

Courtenay L. Glisson of Oxford, Miss., asked for her word, ``succorance,'' to be defined and used in a sentence. Looking for more clues, she finally asked the official pronouncer: ``You have anything else you can give me?''

The audience laughed.

``It's a noun,'' offered pronouncer Alex J. Cameron, chairman of the English department at the University of Dayton, Ohio.

Courtenay tried to spell it, but failed.

The bell rang and the 14-year-old strode off, leaving yet another vacant seat on the stage. ILLUSTRATION: ASSOCIATED PRESS photo

Rebecca Sealfon reacts after winning the National Spelling Bee, for

which she was awarded $5,000, books and other prizes, including a

laptop computer. KEYWORDS: NATIONAL SPELLING BEE

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