Article Text

Nine-year-old Laasya Mohan won the 2026 Fairfax County Spelling Bee after correctly spelling “béarnaise” on her second attempt at a championship word.

The Floris Elementary School fourth-grader took first place Sunday, March 22, at Lake Braddock Secondary School. She and first runner-up Aadhya Vijayakumar, 13, an eighth-grader at Rocky Run Middle School in Chantilly, will advance to the Scripps National Spelling Bee in Washington in late May.

Katherine Song, 12, a sixth-grader at Sangster Elementary School in Springfield, finished as the second runner-up.

Sponsored by the Fairfax County Council PTA, the county bee brought together 90 students who had won elementary and middle school spelling bees in Fairfax and the city of Alexandria.

The competition opened with a 15-word written test, followed by an oral spelling round. Students who completed the oral round successfully and earned the highest written-test scores moved into the finals.

The finals began with an oral vocabulary round that eliminated five competitors. Oral spelling then continued for 15 rounds, including eight rounds featuring only Mohan and Vijayakumar.

Both finalists initially missed championship words before Mohan prevailed with “béarnaise,” a hollandaise-style sauce seasoned with ingredients such as minced shallots, tarragon and chervil and served with meat or fish.

Among the other words correctly spelled by the final two competitors were “biquintile,” “ganosis,” “pelmatogram,” “nomocracy” and “teliospore.”

The other finalists were Elliot Smith of Douglas MacArthur Elementary School in Alexandria; Thomas Snyder of Jefferson-Houston PreK-8 IB School in Alexandria; Aiden Zhang of Haycock Elementary School in Falls Church; Aprameyan Ramanujan of Spring Hill Elementary School in McLean; Ila Pruitt of Compass Homeschool Enrichment in Herndon; Nam Dang of Springfield Estates Elementary School in Springfield; Humza Rawn of Al Fatih Academy in Reston; Farhan Sulbigar of Oak Hill Elementary School in Herndon; Abigail Yoon of Poplar Tree Elementary School in Chantilly; Mehika Misra of Bull Run Elementary School in Centreville; Swara Vadlamani of Longfellow Middle School in Falls Church; Catherine Uzzell of Langston Hughes Middle School in Reston; Aryav Gurjar of Rachel Carson Middle School in Herndon; Sarah Chawla of Al Asr Microschool in Fairfax; and Joaquin Arellano of Saint Rita School in Alexandria.