In the Scripps National Spelling Bee, students from ages 8-15 are expected to stand on a stage and spell out a variety of difficult words until one speller is left standing.
Unfortunately, the rules of the competition do not extend to the ESPN production team that broadcasts the competition.
Sravanth Malla is a 14-year-old eighth-grader from Haverstraw, N.Y., who made it far enough into the competition that ESPN decided to play an introduction video about his love of jazz.
MORE: Karthik Nemmani wins Spelling Bee with 'koinonia'
But there was a problem. His hometown had an extra letter added to it.
It's not as though ESPN or Scripps didn't have resources to find the correct spelling of Malla's hometown. Not only did The Watertown (N.Y.) Daily Times write about his appearance in this year's spelling bee, and that Lohud.com wrote about him when he made the Bee in 2016, the official Scripps Spelling Bee website has his profile with a correctly spelled "Haverstraw, N.Y." underneath his name.
The worst part is that immediately after this video was shown, Malla went up to the microphone to receive his next word, cento, and spelled it incorrectly. The video quickly went from an unfortunate error to a case of adding insult to injury.
It's difficult to say whether seeing one's hometown misspelled on a large screen can affect a person's confidence before a spelling bee, but it certainly could not have helped.