Zaila Avant-garde: Girl Becomes First African-American To Win National Spelling Bee

Zaila Avant-garde: The 14-year-old from Harvey, Louisiana marked history by becoming the first African American winner and the only second Black champion in the bee's 96-year history.

Whether it comes to dribbling a basketball or identifying obscure Latin or Greek roots, Zaila Avant-garde can do it all. The 14-year-old basketball wunderkind from Harvey, Louisiana, breezed to the championship on Thursday night and became the second Black champion in the history of the game.

This bee was different from the others due to the pandemic situation. Where the rooms used to be filled with spectators, this bee only allowed spellers’ immediate families. There was, however, one high-profile fan in attendance, first lady Jill Biden.

The champion whirled and leaped with joy after spelling the winning word, “murraya,” a genus of tropical Asiatic and Australian trees.

Just the one word “nepeta" gave her any real trouble which is a genus of Old World mints. However, she got that right and she jumped even higher than she did when she took the trophy.

She said, “I’ve always struggled with that word. I’ve heard it a lot of times. I don’t know, there’s just some words, for a speller, I just get them and I can’t get them right.”

Who is Zaila Avant-garde

The 14-year-old is a basketball whizz-kid who hopes to play someday in the WNBA. Besides, she holds three Guinness World Records for dribbling multiple balls simultaneously. She has described spelling as a side hobby, whilst she regularly practiced for seven hours a day.

Zaila started spelling in time to qualify for the 2019 bee. She is a basketball standout whose first choice for college is Harvard and also wants to work for NASA. Jawara Spacetime, her father, gave her the last name Avant-garde in tribute to John Coltrane from Jazz Greats.

Zaila also breaks a record dating back to 2008 in which at least one champion or co-champion was of South Asian descent.

From an online bee that she won last year, she used the $10,000 prize to pay for lessons with her coach, Cole Shafer-Ray, 2015 Scripps runner-up who is also a student of Yale.

The only previous Black winner of the bee was from Jamaica in 1998 namely Jody-Anne Maxwell.