KARACHI, Feb 4: Three teams qualified for the national championship round after a neck and neck fight of the Dawn in Education National Spelling Bee competition on Friday.

As many as 118 school teams, qualifying the four district rounds, participated in the Karachi city finals held at the Bahria Auditorium.

The winning teams in the three age groups included: The City School-Junior Girls Branch, PECHS (East district); Ladybird Grammar School, North Nazimabad (Central district); and the BVS Parsi High School (South district).

Teams were finalized after sudden death rounds, while the official word list also exhausted, and the announcer had to seek more words from the dictionary in the final round on Friday, said a coordinator for the event.

Different sittings of contests were witnessed by a large number of parents. The first and second sessions of the contest were supervised by three judges from the University of Karachi - Dr Shakeel Farooqi, Shumaila Shafqat and Kaleem Raza Khan - while the third one was supervised by three teachers from the Berlitz Language Centre - Rehan Moin, Ayesha Rehman and Mr Macro.

In all, nine teams including three each from Karachi, Islamabad and Lahore, would participate in the national championship round, to be held in Karachi on Feb 7. As per rules of the national championship round, the city champions would not compete in teams but as individuals.

Those to participate in the Feb 7 national rounds from Karachi city include: Daniya Aslam, Syeda Wardah Riaz and Izna Nasim of the City School in the 9-11 age group; Mairaj Fatima, Asfia Arfeen and Yusra Kauser of the Ladybird School in the 12-14 age group; and Taha Rafiq, Junaid Ahmad and Asghar Qazi of the BVS School in the 15-17 age group.