“M-U-R-R-A-Y-A”
Those where the letters of the final word that solidified fourteen-year-old Zaila Avant-garde taking the top prize at the 2021 Scripps National Spelling Bee on Thursday. For those who aren’t botanists — or brilliant 8th graders — murraya is “a genus of flowering plants in the citrus family, Rutaceae,” according to Wikipedia.
With her win, the New Orleans spelling phenom Avant-garde becomes the first African American champion in the nearly 100-year history of the event. She will receive a $50,000 cash prize; a commemorative medal; the “Scripps Cup,” which is the official championship trophy of the Scripps National Spelling Bee; a $2,500 cash prize and reference library from Merriam-Webster; and $400 in reference materials from Encyclopædia Britannica.
“I was pretty relaxed on the subject of Murraya and pretty much any other word I got,” Zaila told the Associated Press.
“I can’t even put into words how I feel right now,” she told NPR.“I’d like to say thank you to Bill Murray because the reason I knew that word ‘murraya’ was because of the movie Lost in Translation, which when I was a little kid I used to listen to the soundtrack and so that’s how that word was stuck in my head because it was spelled like Bill Murray’s name.”
Zaila is the first from her hometown to win the contest and the competition’s second Black winner in its 96-year history. The first was Jody-Anne Maxwell of Jamaica in 1998.
Now don’t think that Avant-garde is just a one-trick pony and only spends her time spelling every word she hears. She’s also a basket prodigy. The eighth-grader hopes to one day play in the WNBA and, when she’s not spelling, is known as a basketball prodigy whose skills include dribbling three balls while riding a unicycle. She holds three Guinness World Records for trick dribbling, appeared in a Stephen Curry commercial in 2018, and has a twitter account littered with he basketball exploits.
Oh, she can also dribble multiple basketballs while riding a unicycle and has future plans that include becoming an NBA coach, or being an astronaut for NASA, or an immunologist, or maybe even a scientist who studies gene therapy. When you’re this good at life, it’s nice to have choices.
According to Guinness Book of World Records, Among her practicing, Zaila received a ton of encouragement and support from juggling titleholders who were already part of the Guinness World Records family – such as the multi-talented, Jugglin’ Josh Horton, who has appeared in the book several times.
Many of these influencers were impressed to see the determined spirit of record breaking in such a young individual, and wanted to see her succeed.
Along the two-year practice journey, Zaila kept her other female idols close to her to serve as her own personal form of inspiration.
She mentioned her heroes are Malala Yousafzai, Serena Williams, and Coco Gauff – all who are official Guinness World Records titleholders.
On 14 November 2019, (which also happened to be our annual Guinness World Records Day!), Zaila accomplished her goal and set a new record with 231 bounce juggles.
Avant-garde’s victory has led her to want to break more basketball-related titles in the future, and most of all show young girls everywhere that they can be record holders too.
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