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To bee or not to bee

posted by Pretty Tough | Girls Who Are Fun Fierce & Feminine
Thursday, May 28, 2009 at 9:03pm EDT

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ESPN usually airs football, basketball, ice hockey and occasionally a NCAA Division I championship — but kids pushing around vowels and consonants? America’s youngest and most celebrated letter bearers were featured today on the station generally meant to broadcast athletic endeavors (poker notwithstanding).

We’re talking, of course, of the 82nd Annual Scripps Spelling Bee. The week began with a record 293 spellers and today’s difficult semifinals began with 41 contenders. Chairs on stage emptied one by one until only 11 kids were left.

The finalists include seven girls and four boys and the champ will be crowned tonight during prime time coverage on ABC. (8 p.m. ET) hosted byTom Bergeron. Olympic gold medalist Shawn Johnson and Dr. Jill Biden, wife of Vice President Joe Biden, are expected to attend. The winner receives more than $40,000 in cash and prizes.

Favorites include a couple of pretty smart gals: of Olathe, Kan., who’s made it to the finals four times and Serena Skye Laine-Lobsinger of West Palm Beach, Fla.

Longtime ESPN Sports Center co-anchor Chris Mkendry announced the event live from the Grand Hyatt in Washington D.C. Great coverage from a channel that ranks the importance of the Spelling Bee somewhere below Major League Baseball but above women’s softball and basketball.

The highly competitive National Spelling Bee is an excursion through Webster’s dictionary in search of obscure words. Spellers ask almost identical questions as they try to wrap their brain matter around how the word is formed.

“Can you tell me the definition?” “Can you tell me the country of origin?” “Can you use it in a sentence?”

A few of today’s troublesome words included piqueur, grenache and fedelini. Twitter fans can follow www.twitter.com/scrippsbee throughout the competition for highlights.

Can you spell T-O-U-G-H?