I wasnât all that impressed that the first black person had won the Scripps National Spelling Bee. What had knocked me for a loop was the video of 14-year-old Zaila Avant-garde dribbling multiple basketballs and juggling an assortment of different-size balls while perched on a couple of basketballs and even while riding a unicycle. What soured me on her was that, for some reason, after she had been eliminated from an earlier bee for misspelling âvagaries,â her father changed her last name from Heard to Avant-garde, apparently as an odd homage to jazz great John Coltrane. I assume she went along with it, but I canât be certain.