Zaila Avant-garde of Harvey, Louisiana became the first African-American to win the Scripps National Spelling Bee Thursday night when she corrected spelled the word “murraya,” a genus of tropical trees native to Asia and Australia, the Associated Press reports.
Avant-garde had only one word that gave her significant trouble: “nepeta,” a genus of Old World mints. Chaitra Thummala, a 12-year-old from Frisco, Texas, was runner-up. Both Zaila and Chaitra are coached by Cole Shafer-Ray, a 20-year-old Yale student who was the 2015 Scripps runner-up.
Saying that spelling is more of “a hobby,” Avant-garde would spend up to seven hours a day practicing her spelling and learning new words. She says she hopes to play in the WNBA one day, and she’s got skills that can make that possible: she holds three Guinness world records for dribbling multiple balls simultaneously.
While Avant-garde is the first African-American to win the title, she is not the first Black person to win the National Spelling Bee. Jody-Anne Maxwell of Jamaica in 1998.