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NATIONAL HARBOR, Md. — As Rishik Gandhasri stepped to the microphone late Thursday night at the Scripps National Spelling Bee, the seventh-grader from San Jose knew he was one word away from fulfilling his dream of becoming a spelling champion.

But with eight spellers surviving in the 20th and final round, Rishik — who would lead off — was worried about what the contest would throw at him.

“When it was down to the last word I was super nervous,” Rishik told this news organization Friday. “I didn’t know if they were going to pump up the difficulty and try and get some of us out. Because I was the first in every round, I didn’t know what to expect.”

When Rishik correctly spelled the word auslaut, the Chaboya Middle School student became the night’s first champion. What he couldn’t have imagined is that his seven competitors would nail their words as well, minting eight co-champions in a stunning end to a contest that has never had more than two winners in its 92-year-history.

“I just felt so happy that my dream finally came true,” Rishik said. “I’ve been working toward this since second grade. I was so happy. It felt surreal. It felt like I was in a dream, like it wasn’t really real.

“But it is.”

The final day started with 50 finalists — including five from the Bay Area — selected for their performance on a written test and two rounds of on-stage spelling. Sixteen advanced to the evening’s prime-time finals, including Rishik, whose older brother Rutvik placed sixth overall in the 2016 bee.

By the end of Round 15, Rishik and seven others remained. After Round 17, the prestigious contest’s longtime pronouncer, Jacques Bailly, made a remarkable declaration: The competition was running out of words to challenge the remaining eight contestants.

“Champion spellers,” Bailly said, “we are now in uncharted territory.”

Calling the group “the most phenomenal assemblage of spellers in the history of this storied competition,” Bailly said that if no single winner could be crowned by the end of 20 rounds, all remaining competitors would be declared co-champions.

Rishik said he wasn’t sure he could outlast the other spellers should the competition continue until one speller remained. But he knew he could correctly spell three more words.

“I thought I might have a chance here,” he said.

Rishik’s mom, Usha Gandhasri, had made the trip with him to Maryland and was in the audience during the “roller-coaster” night of spelling. When Rishik was given his last word of the night, auslaut — defined by Merriam-Webster as the final sound in a word or syllable — she felt confident he was going to win.

“Once I heard the word, I knew that he knew it,” Usha Gandhasri said. “I couldn’t control my emotions. We have been doing this, between my two kids, for 10 years. It was really an emotional moment for me.”

As Rishik spelled his last word of the night he raised both arms in triumph.

The words Rishik correctly spelled on-stage were: crambo, invincible, Yiddishkeit, hendiadys, Aufgabe, hinalea, keriah, frailejón, myctophid, bottarga, coryphée, chelydroid, Nyaya, fravashi, tjaele, rhathymia, murrain, anthocyanin and auslaut.

Back in San Jose, Rishik’s father, Raj Gandhasri, and older brother, Rutvik, now a high school student who also twice reached the Spelling Bee finals, jumped off the couch to celebrate.

“Every parent was nervous,” Raj Gandhasri said. “As he got closer, it got a little bit more nail-biting.”

“He did so good,” he added. “Beyond our expectations.”

The other Bay Area finalists — and their onstage words — were:

Vayun Krishna, 12, Sunnyvale; 6th grade, Challenger School-Middlefield (fossiliferous, frivolity, teledu, pyrheliometer, drilvis and ixodid, which he misspelled ixodyd)

Anisha Rao, 13, Dublin; 8th grade, Eleanor Murray Fallon Middle School (cubit, plumbiferous, compurgator, cassone, oeillade, salmagundi and ascidium, which she misspelled acidium)

Nidhi Vadlamudi, 13, Santa Clara; 7th grade, Summit Denali (shako, astrography, rhynchophorous and kula, which she misspelled kulah)

Amith Vasantha, 14, Saratoga; 8th grade, BASIS Independent Silicon Valley (bunya, nebula, myelopoiesis and mouton, which he misspelled moutane.)

They were among 23 competitors from the Bay Area this year. Three of them had made last year’s finals: Nidhi and Amith were19th, and Anisha 10th.

The competition began Monday in Oxon Hill, Maryland, with 562 spellers ages 7 to 15. In the past two years, the field has greatly expanded with the admission of wild-card spellers who did not advance from regional competitions.

Before Rishik’s win, the most recent bee champion from the Bay Area was Evan O’Dorney of Danville, who took the top prize in 2007 as a homeschooled 13-year-old. Four years later, O’Dorney won the Intel Science Talent Search, then went on to study math at Harvard University, Cambridge’s Churchill College in the United Kingdom, and Princeton University.

Rishik’s celebration is just getting started. Reached by phone Friday, Usha Gandhasri said she and her son hardly slept Thursday night and were up at 6 a.m. Friday for several rounds of interviews.

Rishik shared the win with Shruthika Padhy, 13, of Cherry Hill, N.J.; Sohum Sukhatankar, 13, of Dallas, Texas; Abhijay Kodali, 12, of Flower Mound, Texas; Erin Howard, 14, of Huntsville, Ala.; Christopher Serrao, 13, of Whitehouse Station, N.J.; Saketh Sundar, 13, of Clarksville, Md.; and Rohan Raja, 13, of Irving, Texas. Each will get the full winner’s prize of $50,000 cash.

The eight winners will spend the next several days making a host of national TV appearances, including “Good Morning America,” “Today Show,” “New Day,” “CBS This Morning,” “Live with Kelly and Ryan” and “Jimmy Kimmel Live!”

“It’s really great to be able to share it with my friends,” Rishik said. “We’re not really spelling against each other. We’re all friends at the Bee. We’re against the dictionary. We have a strong sense of camaraderie.”