A List Of Things Thrown Five Minutes Ago

A-N-T-I-C-I-P-A-T-E: Well, it sorta crept up on us this time, but Memorial Day falling so early this year means that the Scripps-Howard National Spelling Bee indeed begins next Tuesday, with televised rounds on Wednesday and Thursday.

For the seventh straight year, we'll be giving full court press coverage to all the spellers and their exploits. Not much will change this year -- we will probably employ CoverItLive for the final televised rounds, but probably not for the day competition, and will be popularizing the #bee09 hashtag to draw folks here.

It begins, of course, by seeing who we've got, and these bullet points should whet your appetite:

• Unlike most years, there are no members of the five-timers club. The 4 four-timers, however, include ALOTT5MA fave Kavya Shivashankar, who's made it to primetime in each of her three previous years and is returning despite a missed word in her regional bee. Also returning from last year's primetime is 2008 runner-up Sidharth Chand, who is, indeed, sporting the 'stache this year, and Peoria's Kyle Mou.
• Other returners of note include four-timer Keiko Bridwell, once described by Shonda as a "super cute spelling hottie" who has "Cover Girl written all over her"; Long Island's Zachary Zagorski; and three-timer Morgan Gilliam, who we loved when she was the competition's youngest speller at 9 in 2005, who then returned in 2007 and is back for her third and final try at age 13.
• The Mattsassin is not returning, having lost in his county bee.
• One of the first-timers is Albuquerque's Hannah Evans, younger sister of now-retired five-timer Matthew Evans.
  

But let's crowdsource this mofo. Look at the roster of spellers, including all our Neighbors to the North, google some of the names to see what their local newspapers are saying about them, and tell us what you find.** The more we get to know these kids before it starts, the more fun it'll be.

Finally, this housekeeping note: because she has finally decided to take a long-overdue vacation -- her first since Grey's Anatomy began -- our friend Shonda Rhimes will not be joining us for this year's coverage. Since 2005, we've been fortunate to have her join us here to supply her insight, her enthusiasm, and her voluminous crush on a certain diminutive South Asian speller from Texas, and we will all miss her this year.

We do look forward to the return of our regular crew of former National Spelling Bee finalists, and are always looking for other insightful voices. So if you've competed in the National Bee before, are a parent of someone who has or otherwise believe you should be involved in our team coverage (have you created a hit tv drama?) or just want to contribute a single essay, shoot me an email at throwingthingsblog@hotmail.com.

** Edited for clarification. We're only interested in public accounts like newspaper articles; please don't be hunting down these kids' MySpace/Facebook pages or other personal sites which were not intended for our eyes.