Zaila Avant-garde became the first Black American to win the Scripps National Spelling Bee in nearly 100 years of competitions, but spelling is just her side hustle.
With apologies to Game 2 of the NBA Finals, the best sporting event on Thursday night was the Scripps National Spelling Bee that saw 14-year-old Louisiana native, Zailia Avant-garde winning and making history at the same time.
After correctly spelling “Murraya,” Avant-garde became the first Black American to win the event in 93 competitions. She also collects a $50,000 prize for her win, which is pretty impressive considering she just began practicing for the event two years ago.
“It felt really good to win because I have been working on it for like two years. So to actually win the whole thing was like a dream come true,” she told CNN’s “New Day” on Friday. “I felt like in the moment I snapped out of a surreal dream.”
Zaila Avant-garde hopes to play at Harvard, the WNBA and coach in the NBA
It’s even more impressive when you consider Avant-garde refers to spelling as her side hustle. She has aspirations of playing basketball at Harvard and playing in the WNBA. After her win, the WNBA Twitter account congratulated her on her achievement.
https://twitter.com/WNBA/status/1413514428746637317
She also hopes to work for NASA after playing basketball if coaching in the NBA doesn’t work out and pursue a career in gene editing or neuroscience.
Not too shabby for a 14-year-old.
Zaila Avant-garde is a 3-time Guinness World Record holder
Oh, and she also owns three Guinness World Records for her ball-handling prowess, including most bounce juggles in a minute.
What an incredible achievement by our multi-talented record holder! pic.twitter.com/3peSggrvuz
— Guinness World Records (@GWR) July 9, 2021
Avant-garde’s hometown New Orleans Saints were among those congratulating her on her historic win.
Saints, LeBron James congratulate Zaila Avant-garde on winning Scripps National Spelling Bee
https://twitter.com/Saints/status/1413316504062410759
NBA superstar LeBron James tweeted his congratulations to the spelling bee champ and among those retweeting his tweet was Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes.
https://twitter.com/KingJames/status/1413521761900109825
The most gifted 14-year-old speller has been the talk of the sports world and beyond for the last day and she’s just getting started with making her impression on the rest of it.