Zaila only started spelling in time to qualify for the 2019 bee. But there isn’t much typical about a basketball prospect whose first choice for college is Harvard and wants to work for NASA if she doesn’t go pro in hoops. Her father, Jawara Spacetime, gave her the last name Avant-garde in tribute to jazz great John Coltrane.

This bee was different from any that came before because of the coronavirus pandemic, which led to the cancellation of last year’s bee. It was moved from its usual location just outside Washington to an ESPN campus in Florida, and only the top 11 spellers competed in person. Previous rounds were held virtually.

Only spellers’ immediate families were allowed to attend, in contrast to the hundreds of fans and former spellers who normally pack the bee ballroom. There was, however, one high-profile fan in attendance: first lady Jill Biden.

The first lady, an English professor at Northern Virginia Community College near the nation’s capital, also attended the 2009 bee. The seasoned public speaker told the spellers she was once crippled by stage fright.

“In sixth grade I was my school’s spelling bee champion. I had a chance to go to the next level, but on the day of the regional competition, I told my mother that I was sick,” Biden said. “The truth was that I was too nervous to go, so I have incredible admiration for each and every one of you.”

The competition itself was hardly recognizable compared to the most recent version. In 2019, Scripps’ word list was no match for the deep and talented field, and the bee ended in an eight-way tie.

This year, five of the 11 finalists were gone after the first round, and Zaila emerged as the champion in just under two hours. Had the bee reached the two-hour mark, a new lightning-round tiebreaker would have determined the winner. The field was perhaps thinner than usual because of the 2020 cancellation, which denied a strong crop of eighth-graders of their best chance at winning and prevented younger spellers from gaining valuable experience.

Zaila will take home more than $50,000 in cash and prizes. She used the $10,000 prize from an online bee she won last year to pay for lessons with her coach, 2015 Scripps runner-up Cole Shafer-Ray, who charges $130 an hour — part of a burgeoning industry of private tutors who work with most of the top spellers.

Chaitra Thummala, a 12-year-old from Frisco, Texas — another student of Shafer-Ray — was runner-up. She has two years of eligibility remaining and instantly becomes one of next year’s favorites.

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