![]() In correctly spelling "murraya" - a type of tropical tree - in the 18th round of the final, the Louisiana eighth-grader emerged from a field of 208 other competitors to claim the title of champion. "Now I get a nice trophy, which is the best part of any win.In July 2021, Zaila Avant-garde made history as the first Black American winner of the Scripps National Spelling Bee, and the first Black winner since Jamaican teen Jody-Anne Maxwell in 1998. While on stage, Avant-garde said she felt "really good" after her victory. At the time, Cox wasn’t allowed to stay in the same hotel as the rest of the spellers. Not only is she the first winner from the African Diaspora since Maxwell, but she is the first Black American finalist since MacNolia Cox, who made it to the championship round back in 1936. That event turned out to be the preparation for her triumph on Thursday night.Īvant-garde’s win is historically significant. After Scripps was canceled in 2020 due to the pandemic, Avant-garde won the first national Kaplan Online Spelling Bee, taking home the $10,000 grand prize, beating a pool of 88 students. Then, he started to think that maybe a spelling bee might be a really interesting thing to put me in.”Īvant-garde participated in the 2019 Scripps bee but didn’t make it to the finals. “He expected to stump me with this really crazy word but I got it right. “He was really surprised,” Avant-garde told. While watching the Scripps National Spelling Bee, her father asked her to spell the word “knaidel." Without hesitation, she replied, “K-N-A-I-D-E-L.” It was then that he knew she had a gift and hired a spelling coach for her. Her father noticed her knack for spelling when she was 10 years old. ![]() ![]() Unlike many of her fellow students who have years of training for the event, Avant-garde is relatively new to spelling championships. "I can go out, like my Guinness world records, just leave it right there and walk off." "I kind of thought I would never be into spelling again, but I'm also happy that I'm going to make a clean break from it," Zaila said. Currently, she holds several Guinness world records for dribbling and has appeared in a commercial with NBA superstar Stephen Curry. She’s also a basketball prodigy with dreams of playing in the WNBA, coach in the NBA, and to join NASA. Mastery of spelling is just one of Avant-garde’s hobbies. ![]() “I was pretty relaxed on the subject of Murraya and pretty much any other word I got," Zaila told ESPN.Ī confetti celebration ensued after she correctly spelled the word of Latin origin. “Does this word contain like the English name Murray, which would be the name of a comedian?” Zaila asked, referring to the actor Bill Murray and drawing laughs from the judges and the pronouncer. ![]() Previously, the only other Black champion was Jody-Anne Maxwell of Jamaica, who was also the only international winner in 1998.Īvant-garde solidified her place as the champion by spelling the word “Murraya,” which is defined as “a genus of tropical Asiatic and Australian trees (family Rutaceae) having pinnate leaves and flowers with imbricated petals” by Merriam-Webster. Zaila Avant-garde, a 14-year-old from New Orleans, won the 2021 Scripps National Spelling Bee Thursday night by correctly spelling the word "murraya.” Zaila becomes the first African American national champion in the spelling bee’s history. ![]()
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