Dineth Fernando has only been in Australia for less than a year and has already brought home a world youth title for his country.
The 14-year-old took out the World Youth Scrabble Championship in Nairobi this week, beating out 140 competitors from across the world.
Dineth, who originally hails from Sri Lanka, credits the win to a steady diet of practising 200 words a day from the board game's official dictionary.
"All the hard work paid off," Dineth said.
The Melbourne-based teenager, for whom English is his second language, said the game has helped him find his feet in Australia and make friends.
He said he got into the game when he was eight years of age through school. He took a liking to the game, competing in national championships in 2022 and 2024.
In July this year he won the Australian Youth Scrabble Championship, inspiring him to compete at the world youth event.
He says Scrabble is very popular in Sri Lanka because of competitions held between schools.
"There are school Scrabble clubs and it's extremely competitive," Dineth said.
"There are a tonne of youth players who study really hard daily for tournaments and they aim to go to the national team."
While he has achieved a great feat in a language game, Dineth hopes to be a doctor one day and said he had an interest in mathematics and science.
His father, Prasanna Fernado, who was a medical doctor in Sri Lanka, said the family moved to Australia in February this year owing to his study and work.
Mr Fernando said he was very proud of his son winning the championship, especially given the 25 hours of flying time to the Kenyan capital which was at times threatened by the war between the US and Iran.
"It feels as if its a dream," Mr Fernando said.
"I knew that he would one day win it, but its still surreal.
"At the last moment I thought we would take the risk and the two of us would go. So luckily it paid off and I'm delighted about it."
He also credits his coach Rashid Sudin, who worked with Dineth for several years.
Australian competitive Scrabble relatively underdeveloped
Mr Fernando said countries like Sri Lanka, India, Pakistan, Malaysia and Thailand encourage the game because of its benefits in academics and sportsmanship.
He said in contrast Australia did not have much school-level Scrabble.
Youth Australia Scrabbler Players Association president Tony Hunt said just one school in Australia had Scrabble as a part of the curriculum, Cabramatta Public School in Sydney's south-west.
He said some gifted and talented programs in Victoria offered Scrabble as an extension activity.
Mr Hunt said he would like to see the board game rolled out into more schools.
"We want other people to think of it as a sport, but a sport that addresses literacy and numeracy," Mr Hunt said.
"We would like educators to consider Scrabble as an extension activity for [gifted and talented] kids. Number one, they're going to be good at it, and number two, they're going to like it."
Source: ABC
--Agencies
