Culver City boy advances in National Spelling Bee final

LOS ANGELES — An eighth-grader at Culver City Middle School advanced today to the fifth round of the 89th Scripps National Spelling Bee in National Harbor, Maryland.

Cooper Komatsu correctly spelled cacomixl, a catlike mammal found in southe North America, related to but smaller than a raccoon.

Cooper was the third speller in the fourth round, which was conducted by states at the Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center. Both of the spellers who preceded him misspelled their words and were eliminated.

Cooper was among 45 spellers who advanced to the fourth round out of an initial field of 285.

Cooper correctly spelled the words tagasaste -- a small evergreen tree -- and adventitious -- an adjective describing something that occurs by chance, during Wednesday’s second and third rounds and was among the top scorers on a 26-question multiple-choice spelling and vocabulary test taken Tuesday.

Cooper also competed in last year’s bee, correctly spelling both of his semifinal words, but did not score high enough on two multiple-choice spelling and vocabulary tests to be among the 10 spellers to qualify for the championship finals.

The format of this year’s bee has changed, with the second spelling and vocabulary test dropped.

Cooper qualified for the national bee on March 15 by wiing the Los Angeles County Scripps Regional Spelling Bee for the second consecutive year.

Cooper is 13 years old and teamed with Jem Burch to win the North American School Scrabble championship last month.

Cooper has studied Japanese since he was a kindergartener and likes how it coects him to his ancestors’ culture. He has a passion for geography, maps and discovering new places. Social studies and math are his favorite subjects.

Cooper is a member of his school’s cross country and robotics teams and a Boy Scout. He is a Los Angeles Clippers fan but says he also loves the Los Angeles Lakers. His mateal grandfather, Robert Rosenberg, competed in the 1955 Scripps National Spelling Bee.

The bee is intended “to inspire children to improve their spelling, increase their vocabularies and develop correct English usage that will help them all their lives,” according to Paige Kimble, the bee’s executive director and 1981 champion.

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The bee is limited to students in eighth grade or below, with contestants ranging in age from 6 to 15 years old.

The wier will receive $40,000 from Scripps, which owns television stations, cable networks and newspapers; a $2,500 U.S. savings bond and a complete reference library from the dictionary publisher Merriam-Webster; and $400 in reference works from Encyclopaedia Britaica and a three-year membership to Britaica Online Premium.