Ron Kantowski watches the consonants fly, and miss, at a spelling bee of sports names

Leila Navidi

Stephanie Jones of Boston, left, makes a face after misspelling an athlete’s name during a spelling bee Wednesday at ESPN Zone in New York-New York. Jillian Austin, right, the host, would award the top prize to Las Vegan D.J. Jenkins for spelling the name “Stoudemire” correctly.

By Ron Kantowski (contact)

Friday, May 30, 2008 | 2 a.m.

To celebrate the Scripps National Spelling Bee — or perhaps to hammer home that the finals will be broadcast on ESPN today — six ESPN Zone restaurants, including the one in New York-New York on the Strip, held sports spelling bees Wednesday night.

Verdict: Those kids in D.C. don’t have anything to worry about.

Thirteen brave souls, most of whom appeared coherent, signed up here. I think the turnout would have been better had the Red Wings-Penguins game not run long.

“I dunno,” said one of the contestants when I asked where the stage was. “I hope it’s not in front of those big screens or these people are gonna kill us.”

Down in front.

D-O-W-N-I-N-F-R-O-N-T.

Down in front.

Actually, the words were a little tougher than that, but only a little.

The first name was “Joe Frazier.”

The contestant was a woman from Canada. She got “Joe” right but was eliminated when she recited the Canadian spelling of “Frazier.”

F-R-A-S-E-R.

Down goes contestant No. 1! Down goes contestant No. 1! Down goes contestant No. 1!

She apparently thought the “Thrilla in Manila” had something to do with Imelda Marcos shopping for shoes.

Every time a contestant misspelled a word, the moderator wearing about 16 ESPN logos on his golf shirt threw a yellow flag. It wasn’t long before the area around the stage looked like the playing field at Sam Boyd Stadium after a UNLV punt return.

In rapid succession, contestants whiffed on “Joba Chamberlain,” “Annika Sorenstam,” “Eric Byrnes” and “Micah Owings.” It looked like the Astros trying to hit Kerry Wood.

When one guy missed “Kareem Abdul-Jabbar” — he left out the hyphen and the second B in Jabbar — I thought I was going to faint, like that kid in the real spelling bee did.

Part of the problem was that half the field was from Canada and “Gretzky” and “Roughriders” — or is it “Rough Riders”? — weren’t on the word list.

A big guy from Winnipeg stepped to the stage cradling what must have been a 96-ounce tankard of Molson Dry and promptly burped on “Hines Ward.” He spelled it like the ketchup.

Somebody managed to stumble through “Agassi” without double faulting and a guy from D.C., the site of the big bee, which should have disqualified him, spelled “Joe Gibbs” correctly.

“Hey, no fair,” yelled a waiter as people yelled at him to stop watching the spelling bee and go fetch their beers and hot wings. “That guy’s from Washington. At least make him spell ‘Sonny Jurgensen.’”

Too late. The judges had moved on. They had to, or the bee wouldn’t have outlasted Spinks vs. Tyson.

In another 91 seconds it was over. D.J. Jenkins of Las Vegas — the only local who entered — spelled “Stoudemire” correctly to win some video games and a bunch of stuff with ESPN logos on it. The home game of “Concentration” was not included.

“Stoudemire” isn’t exactly “appoggiatura” (a nonharmonic tone, usually a half- or whole step above the harmonic tone, which is performed on the beat and then resolved), last year’s winning word in the real spelling bee. But considering he is 46 years old and was wearing a Yankees shirt, I thought it might give Jenkins a problem.

He and I were about the only people in ESPN Zone old enough to remember Mel Stottlemyre, the old Bombers right-hander, and I thought he might go with the alternate spelling.

Then the judges would have had to get involved, which could have been tricky, considering two guys wearing Red Wings jerseys kept shouting at them to bring the check.

“I thought for sure they were going to give me ‘Szczerbiak,’ ” Jenkins said after giving a few words — or at least letters — to one of the TV guys.

Szczerbiak? What about Krzyzewski? I said. Weren’t you worried you might be asked to spell the name of the Duke basketball coach?

“C-O-A-C-H ... K,” Jenkins said.

Where’s that yellow flag?