Zaila Avant-garde has won the 2021 Scripps National Spelling Bee – and she’s already a big deal. Prior to winning she had 12k followers on instagram. Her father, Jawara Spacetime, gave her the last name Avant-garde in tribute to jazz great John Coltrane.
What We Know:
- The 14-year-old from New Orleans was named the winner of the 2021 Scripps National Spelling Bee on Thursday, spelling words such as “querimonious,” “ancistroid,” “solidungulate.” It was “Murraya,” a genus of flowering citrus plants in Asia, that won Avant-garde the competition after runner-up Chaitra Thummala misspelled “neroli oil” in the 17th round.
- In addition to being a spelling champ, the 14-year-old prodigy from Harvey, Louisiana, is a basketball star. She is the first Black American to win the be competition. The only previous Black winner was also the only champ from outside the United States: Jody-Anne Maxwell of Jamaica in 1998.
- Zaila has described spelling as a side hobby, although she routinely practiced for seven hours a day. She is a basketball standout who hopes to play some day in the WNBA and holds three Guinness world records for dribbling multiple balls simultaneously. Zaila twirled and leaped with excitement after spelling the winning word “murraya,” a genus of tropical Asiatic and Australian trees.
- “Nepeta,” a genus of Old World mints, was the only word that gave her trouble.
“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,” she said. “I even knew it was a genus of plants. I know what you are and I can’t get you.”
- Zaila started spelling in 2019, just in enough time to qualify for the spelling bee. She’s already a basketball prospect and her first choice for college is Harvard. She wants to work for NASA someday if she doesn’t go into professional basketball.
Congrats to Zaila for a job well done!
