Despite falling in the third round of preliminaries at the Scripps National Spelling Bee on Wednesday morning, Neha Thawani Nanda held her head high.

The Pacelli Catholic School eighth grader misspelled her word to qualify for the spelling bee finals that is set to take place today. However, that loss did not eclipse the student’s accomplishments that got her to Washington, D.C. to represent Austin at the national level. She made it through the written preliminaries earlier this week and successfully spelled her word “conticent” during round two of the competition.

Those who supported Nanda watched her progress through livestream videos and were proud of her journey to get to the point she did in representing southeast Minnesota nationally.

“I think I speak for all the staff and students at Pacelli (that) we are so proud of all that Neha has accomplished,” said Jean McDermott, principal. “We have watched her prepare for this day and know that she has put in countless hours learning new words, understanding word origins, learning letter patterns for different types of words. What many see as simple memorization, I have come to know, is so much more. Neha has an exceptional grasp of the linguistics of the English language.”