Whether dribbling a basketball or identifying obscure Latin or Greek roots, Zaila Avant-garde doesn’t show much stress. The 14-year-old from Harvey, Louisiana, the United States, breezed to the championship at the Scripps National Spelling Bee on Thursday night, becoming the first African American winner and only the second Black champion in the bee’s 96-year history. Avant-garde has described spelling as a side hobby, although she routinely practiced for seven hours a day. She is a basketball prodigy who hopes to play someday in the WNBA and holds three Guinness world records for dribbling multiple balls simultaneously. Avant-garde, who just finished eighth grade, said winning the national spelling bee is just another goal she can now put on her list of accomplishments. “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,” Avant-garde said. “I can go out, like my Guinness world records, just leave it right there and walk off.” Avant-garde twirled and leaped with excitement after spelling the winning word, “murraya,” a genus of tropical Asiatic and Australian trees. Only one word gave her any real trouble — “nepeta,” a genus of old-world mints, and she jumped even higher when she got that one right than she did when she took the trophy. Unlike many serious spellers who begin competing as early as kindergarten, Avant-garde discovered her talent for spelling when she was 10 after her father, who watched the national spelling bee competition, quizzed her on the winning words of years past. She spelled nearly all of them correctly. “He was a bit surprised by that,” she told the New York Times. Her coach Cole Shafer-Ray said that Avant-garde has a natural talent for spelling, saying that spellers at her level are usually “well-connected in the spelling community” and have been spelling for many years. “She really just had a much different approach than any speller I’ve ever seen. She basically knew the definition of every word that we did, like pretty much verbatim,” he said. “She knew, not just the word but the story behind the word, why every letter had to be that letter and couldn’t be anything else.” The only previous Black winner of the bee was Jody-Anne Maxwell of Jamaica in 1998. Avant-garde also breaks a streak dating back to 2008 during which at least one champion or co-champion was of Asian descent. As winner of the national competition, Avant-garde is taking home US$50,000 in cash and prizes. (SD-Agencies) | 