Culver City boy knocked out during National Spelling Bee finals

An eighth-grader at Culver City Middle School was knocked out of the finals of the 89th Scripps National Spelling Bee in National Harbor, Maryland, after misspelling the word illicium.

Cooper Komatsu was one of 10 contestants to advance to the finals, which was held this afteoon at the Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center.

He began the day by correctly spelling cacomixl, a catlike mammal found in southe North America, related to but smaller than a raccoon. He went on to spell:

-- glaucothoe, a young hermit crab;

-- buccal, an adjective meaning related to the mouth; and

-- rerebrace, a piece of armor protecting the upper arm.

Cooper misspelled illicium, a small genus of evergreen trees of the magnolia family that have aromatic persistent leaves and yellow or purplish flowers and include one whose fruit is the source of star anise oil.

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.