Teen basketball prodigy wins National Spelling Bee: 'I don't really know how I do it'

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Teen basketball dribbling prodigy wins National Spelling Bee: 'I don't really know how I do it'

14-year-old Zaila Avant-garde is the first African American winner of the Scripps National Spelling Bee.

14-year-old Louisiana native Zaila Avant-garde already had multiple Guinness world records to her name when she was crowned the first African-American winner of the Scripps National Spelling Bee Thursday night.

Avant-garde, who has called spelling a side hobby, is a basketball standout who hopes to play someday in the WNBA. Her ability to dribble multiple balls simultaneously has earned her three Guinness world records.

"I don't really know, like, how I do any of the stuff I do," the teen prodigy told "America's Newsroom" Friday. "I'm pretty sure that juggling the -- keeping track of all the balls helps with spelling."

Avant-garde only started spelling in time to qualify for the 2019 competition, crediting seven-hour study sessions and "a lot of luck" for her fast success.

"To ask me how I do this type of stuff, like spelling and all this, it's like asking a millipede how it walks with all those legs, because then it's going to get all confused and all tangled up and it will just fall down," she explained, getting laughs from co-hosts Dana Perino and Trace Gallagher.

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Avant-garde easily spelled "murraya," a genus of tropical Asiatic and Australian trees, to take home the trophy. "Nepeta," a genus of Old World mints, was the word that gave her the most trouble in the final.

"I had seen it many times before and recognized it. I wasn't quite sure how to spell it," she said.

When asked about her future plans, Avant-garde contemplated being an NBA coach, working for NASA, or studying neuroscience and how the brain works.

"I have a lot of different interests," she said.

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Avant-garde will take home more than $50,000 in cash and prizes for the win. 2021 was her last year of eligibility for the competition.

The event was held for the first time since 2019 after the coronavirus pandemic canceled the 2020 contest. The final was moved from its usual location outside Washington, D.C., to an ESPN campus in Florida. 

Only the top 11 spellers competed in person as previous rounds were held virtually. Spellers' immediate families attended alongside first lady Jill Biden.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.