North American high school Scrabble champ spells out lofty goals | 24CA News
It’s arduous for Toronto highschool scholar Ruth Li to discover a aggressive sport of Scrabble. At 17 years outdated, she’s outpaced any family and friends who dare take her on.
“I’ve played a couple of games with people in my life,” she says. “Obviously did not go too well for them. I play online so I can meet people who have a similar ability level to me.”
Even that expertise pool is pretty shallow, as Li has just lately been topped the highschool division champion on the North American Scrabble World Championships. She went 9-0 on her approach to successful the competitors in Washington, D.C., taking residence $1,000 in prize cash.
Ruth Li beat James Donnelly to win the North American Scrabble Championships.
Ruth Li
In the ultimate, she began out with “fices,” which suggests belligerent mongrel canine. She additionally put down tiles to spell out a pair of currencies, “guineas” and “dinar.” They’re phrases she doesn’t use in on a regular basis dialog however has run into in previous video games. She has a treasure trove of phrases in her reminiscence to name upon — even when she doesn’t know what they imply.
“In one of the first moves of my finals game, I played fogey,” she says. “I don’t even know what that one means, but it’s kind of a strange-looking word.”
“Fogey” is a time period used to explain older adults.
Li started taking part in the sport when a classmate in Grade 6 was holding auditions for somebody to accomplice with within the faculty Scrabble membership.
“I played the first game with her and we it just clicked,” she says. “There was really good chemistry with us as a team, and she basically stopped the auditions there and we played as partners for a couple of years.”
Li would go on to win the Toronto District School Board championship twice earlier than getting into to compete within the North American Championships. It was solely after she gained that she realized she was the primary girl to win the highschool division.
“I think it’s more so that a lot of girls are not necessarily encouraged to be competitive, even if nowadays women and men are educated together,” she says. “And women aren’t necessarily pushed to be competitive in academics, but also in like extracurricular activities.”
Developing a aggressive edge hasn’t been an issue for Li, who has a 98+ common in highschool with hopes of taking biomedical engineering in college at both McMaster or Waterloo.
Winning the championship will look good as an extracurricular on her functions, as will all the additional time she places into mentoring youthful college students on her highschool robotics crew. She additionally volunteers on the Holland Bloorview Kids Rehabilitation Hospital (the biggest in Canada) the place she teaches robotics to youth with disabilities.
“I think I’ve been so privileged to have this high school robotics team that has helped me learn so much about engineering and discover my passion for it that I just really want to spread that to my community and to other children.”
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