A Wake County teenager’s impressive bid to be crowned the top speller in the nation ended Thursday night when she tried to spell “murrina.”

Ananya Rao Prassanna, 13, of Cary, spelled it “marina” for a disease carried by Central American horses and mules.

Prassanna walked away from the nationally televised finals tied for third place out of a field that had started this week with 245 spellers.

Prassanna had the highest finish for a North Carolina speller since Sreethan Gajula of Union County finished in 7th place in the 2021 Spelling Bee. No North Carolinian has won the Spelling Bee since 1970.

Spelling prodigy

Prassanna has been a spelling prodigy for years. The seventh-grade student at Davis Drive Middle School in Cary qualified for her first National Spelling Bee in 2022 when she was an elementary school student in Nebraska. She tied for 49th that year.

Prassanna moved to North Carolina after her family relocated for her father’s job. Her father, Prassanna Rao Rajgopal, has said they picked Davis Drive Middle in part because of the school’s strong support for the Spelling Bee program.

Michael Hokenberg, the principal of Davis Drive Middle, traveled to National Harbor, Maryland, this week to cheer his student on.

“Great to see all the smiles after years of hard work!” Hokenberg posted Wednesday on X, formerly called Twitter. “The @DDMSBuzz and @wcpss communities are behind you, Ananya.

Last year, Prassanna tied for 74th place.

Winning Spelling Bee words

Prassanna’s experience paid off this year as she spelled words such as “réclame,” “conyrine” and “rusa” to advance to the preliminary rounds, quarterfinals and semifinals.

She entered Thursday among the “elite eight” spellers who qualified for the finals.

• In Round 9, the opening round of the finals, she spelled morbilliform, which resembles the eruption of measles.

• In Round 10, she correctly answered the vocabulary question for the word velocipede, meaning a lightweight wheeled vehicle propelled by the rider.

• in Round 11, Prassanna correctly spelled saltigrade, meaning having the feet or legs adapted to leaping.

• In Round 12, she correctly spelled martaban, which is a large green glazed pottery jar originally made in Lower Burma.

• In Round 13, she spelled tennesi, which are coins of a monetary unit from Turkmenistan.

She will have a chance to appear in her fourth National Spelling Bee next year.