“Murraya” pronounced “muh-ree-yuh” is the word that earned 14-year-old Zaila Avant-garde, whose name is a tribute to jazz musician John Coltrane, the Scripps National Spelling Bee trophy. She is the first African American winner after 96 years of contests.
Avant-garde won in less than two hours managing to maneuver through this year’s new rules, which included multiple-choice vocabulary and a lightning-round tiebreaker. The latter wasn’t necessary.
So what exactly does murraya mean? According to Merriam Webster, murraya is “a genus of tropical Asiatic and Australian trees (family Rutaceae) having pinnate leaves and flowers with imbricated petals.”
Avant-garde was relaxed for most of the spelling bee, including for the winning word. The only word that stumped her was “nepeta”, a genus of mints.
Avant-garde beat runner-up Chaitra Thummala, a 12-year-old from Frisco, Texas and Bhavana Madini, a 13-year-old from Plainview, New York, who finished third.
While most spellers start competing as young as kindergarten, Avant-garde got her start only a few years ago. Her father, Jawara Spacetime, watched the spelling bee on television and came to a realization. His daughter, who would often solve complicated math problems in her head, would also be good at spelling.
After bowing out of the 2019 preliminary rounds, Avant-garde started to take spelling more seriously and began training with private coach, Cole Shafer-Ray, a 20-year-old Yale student and the 2015 Scripps runner-up.
Despite getting a later start and not being well-connected, Avant-garde was able to excel pretty quickly and do something most spellers couldn’t.
“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,” Shafer-Ray says. “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.”
In addition to a trophy, Avant-garde took home a $50,000 cash prize. She also hopes her win will open the door for more African Americans to win the spelling bee as well.
In fact, she even thought about those that came before her including MacNolia Cox. In 1936, MacNolia, became the first Black finalist for the spelling bee but wasn’t allowed to stay at the same hotel as the other spellers.
Besides Avant-garde, the only Black to ever win was international winner Jody-Anne Maxwell of Jamaica in 1998.
Avant-garde’s inspirations are Malala Yousafzai, Serena Williams and Coco Gauff.
Holding the title of being the winner of the Scripps National Spelling Bee isn’t Avant-garde’s only accomplishment, however. Avant-garde also holds three Guinness world records for dribbling multiple balls at once.
The eighth grader’s records include: “Most Bounced Juggles” in a one-minute span with four basketballs, “Most Dribbles” for a 30-second time interval with four basketballs and “Most Basketballs Dribbled In One Minute Simultaneously” with a total of six basketballs.
She also appeared in a commercial with basketball star Stephen Curry.
For her, spelling is just a hobby despite the fact that she practiced seven hours a day. Her real dream is to play in the WNBA or coach in the NBA.
“Basketball, I’m not just playing it. I’m really trying to go somewhere with it. Basketball is what I do. Spelling is really a side thing I do. It’s like a little hors d’oeuvre. But basketball’s like the main dish,” Avant-garde says.
Avant-garde has two more years of eligibility and is one of the favorites to win next year as well.
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