BBC Online :
A teenage basketball prodigy has become the first African American to win the US Scripps National Spelling Bee.
Zaila Avant-garde, a 14-year-old from New Orleans, Louisiana, cruised to victory with the word “murraya”, a type of tropical tree.
To get to that point she had to spell out “querimonious” and “solidungulate”.
Despite practising for up to seven hours a day, she describes spelling as a side hobby – Zaila’s main focus is on becoming a basketball pro.
She already holds three world records for dribbling multiple balls at once, and has appeared in an advertisement with the NBA megastar Stephen Curry.
