Junior Samrita Naidu won this year’s school Poetry Out Loud competition on Jan. 14 and will compete for the county title on Feb. 5.

Naidu, who goes by Sami, stood out for her recitation of Diane Thiel’s “Listening in Deep Space,” edging by one point the runner up Jackson Kirkley.

She will compete with that poem and “After the Winter” by Claude MacKay at the county level.

She credited her “pleasantly surprising” win to her background in Indian classical dancing.

“In my type of dance, there’s a lot of expressiveness, whether it’s through physicality or your facial expressions, and I feel like I went into it with that sort of mindset,” Naidu said.

Having diverse interests, Sami does medical research in the Aspiring Scholars program and participates in Science Olympiad, where she has won over 50 medals. Last summer she hiked over 200 miles on the Camino de Santiago in Spain with her mother.

Poetry Out Loud is a national competition in which students memorize and recite poetry; it teaches public speaking and appreciation for historic and contemporary poetry. The winner of the county competition advanced to the state level; that winner will compete for the national title in Washington, D.C.

The county competition is 4:30 p.m., Feb. 5, at the Sacramento County Office of Education, Conference Center, 3661 Whitehead St., Suite 100, Mather, Caif.