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A Louisiana teen recently made history when she became the first African American to win the Scripps National Spelling Bee.
Fourteen-year-old Zaila Avant-garde cinched her victory in the Scripps National Spelling Bee by correctly spelling "murraya," a genus of tropical Asiatic and Australian trees, ESPN News reported.
Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner took to Twitter to congratulate the young spelling champion on her victory.
"Such an inspiration to many," Turner wrote in a July 8 Twitter post. "Congrats Zaila on this special and memorable victory. Dream big and know that what you continue to dream is possible."
Avant-garde's private spelling tutor and 2015 Scripps runner-up Cole Shafer-Ray explained Avant-garde's unique approach to spelling.
"Most spellers look at words simply as a sequence of letters to memorize. Zaila looked at each word as a story," Shafer-Ray told ESPN News. "Not only did she know each word's spelling, but she also knew its entire backstory - what its historical context was, what roots it came from and the precise orthographical logic of why every letter of every word had to be exactly what it was."
Avant-garde said that she was inspired by the memory of MacNolia Cox, the event's first Black finalist in 1936 who was barred from staying in the same hotel as the rest of the spellers.
Despite her major accomplishment, Avant-garde described spelling as just a "side hobby" and said that her true passion is basketball. She currently holds three Guinness world records for dribbling several basketballs at the same time, according to AP News.
“Basketball, I’m not just playing it. I’m really trying to go somewhere with it. Basketball is what I do,” Avant-garde told AP News. “Spelling is really a side thing I do. It’s like a little hors d’ouevre. But basketball’s like the main dish.”
Avant-garde aspires to some day play professionally in the WNBA or even coach in the NBA.