Wheel of Fortune and friends

As a contestant on Wheel of Fortune, you’ve got two choices when it’s your turn: Spin the wheel or buy a vowel.

If you want to make sure your best friend — and team partner — is still your best friend after your appearance on the game show, don’t reach down to spin the wheel when what he wants to do is buy a vowel.

Corona del Mar High School students James Conger and Kyle Bodovitz almost made that mistake.

The two 15-year-olds were part of Teen Best Friends week on Wheel of Fortune. Their episode is scheduled to run Monday evening. Wheel of Fortune is broadcast nightly at 7:30 p.m. on ABC.

Kyle and James have been friends since elementary school, and James was responsible for getting the dynamic duo on television. He signed up for e-mail alerts about the show more than two years ago, sent in an application, and finally got notified to audition last spring.

“I thought it would be fun for Kyle and I to try out,” James said, so the boys headed up to the Culver City hotel where the auditions are.

Kyle said contestants are put through practice sessions for the show, designed to see how enthusiastic a player they’d be, as well as how good they are at solving the practice puzzles they’re given. That takes about 3 hours, then you leave, go home and wait for a call. That call didn’t come until early December, and when they were told the taping would be Jan. 11, James said the guys decided to start really watching the show. Cramming, basically, for their big television debut.

They watched every night for a month, James said, looking at letter tendencies, like which ones came up the most. Definitely S and T, James said, and he thought the easiest category was food and drink.

Gary O’Brien, contestant coordinator for Wheel of Fortune, said teens bring a different edge to the show.

“I’ve noticed that teens have a real competitive nature. Not that adults don’t, but maybe [teens] have it a few notches higher, and they’re more competitive when they’re playing against other teens,” O’Brien said.

Plus they’re playing with their best friend. O’Brien said they’ve found that helps teens relax and focus better.

“We try to find teens that work well together as a team, so that one person isn’t doing all the work.”

Kyle and James said during commercial breaks, Pat Sajak, Vanna White and the show’s producers would talk to the players, going over the rules of the game and offering hints on how to play — important hints like don’t look down when spinning the wheel, smile a lot and always buy vowels if you’re stuck trying to figure out the phrase.

Both boys said they weren’t really nervous appearing on TV, but they did get to the taping really early so they could get in a lot of practice time. They agreed they played well, in spite of the vowel issue.

Kyle thinks he made a pretty decent recovery with the whole non-spinning of the wheel, which is kind of heavy, he said. You have to pull it, then push it to make it go. Tricky when you almost start, then have to stop.

“I thought we were going to spin, not buy a vowel. Because I didn’t know that, I almost spinned, so it might look kind of weird on TV,” Kyle said.

Then again, as long as he was smiling, maybe nobody will notice.

SUE THOENSEN may be reached at (714) 966-4627 or at sue.thoensen@latimes.com.