[Photo: Zaila Avant-Garde via Instagram | @basketballasart)]
According to wafb.com, 13 year-old Zaila Avant-Garde, a 7th grader from Harvey, LA, beat out 88 of the best young spellers in the country to win the first-ever Kaplan Online Spelling Bee, hosted in association with Hexco Academic.
Garde, who was the 2019 New Orleans regional spelling champion, won with the word “Qashqai” (definition: a migratory Turkic-speaking people of the Zagros mountains), after a hard-fought back-and-forth with runner-up Harini Logan, a 6th grader from San Antonio, TX. Chaitra Thummala, a 5th grader from San Ramon, CA, placed third.