JIM WATSON/POOL/AFP via Getty Images
- Zaila Avant-garde is the first champion from Louisiana.
- She sailed to victory by spelling "murraya," a type of plant, correctly.
- Avant-garde also holds three Guinness world records including one for the most number of balls dribbled.
- Visit Insider's homepage for more stories.
Fourteen-year-old Zaila Avant-garde is the newly crowned 2021 Scripps National Spelling Bee champion. She is the first champion from Louisiana and also the first African-American winner, according to ESPN.
-ESPN (@espn) July 9, 2021
On Thursday night, the 8th grader from New Orleans won by spelling "murraya," a citrus plant found in Asia, Australia and the Pacific Islands. With a "that is correct" from judge Mary Brooks, she leapt into the air and twirled as confetti fell over her.
She was up against 12-year-old Chaitra Thummala from San Francisco, California. Thummala managed to spell "fewtrils"- which means "things of little value" – correctly, but stumbled at "neroli oil," an essential oil with an orange scent, giving Avant-garde an opening to win.
Avant-garde is also an accomplished basketball player with three Guinness world records, including one for dribbling six balls simultaneously she obtained in January this year, and another for most bounce juggles with four basketballs in a minute.
The Scripps National Spelling Bee is an annual competition that has been held in the US since 1925. It was canceled last year due to the pandemic, but returned this year with first lady Jill Biden in attendance. Biden congratulated Avant-garde in a tweet.
The prodigious teen told People Magazine she wants to go to Harvard University "as a basketball player and student," hopefully paving the way for her to become a coach with the NBA. And she may also want to work for NASA in gene editing, saying "I have a lot of different things I'm interested in."
Her father, Jawara Spacetime, named her Avant-garde in memory of jazz legend John Coltrane, who has an album with the same name