“Exodus to Excellence” is a four-year series that will focus on my high school journey through extemporaneous speaking. Assisted by old ballots and a journal kept during these years, these columns will provide reflections on lots of old competitions and the lessons learned along the way. Each week that a tournament took place in my career, one of these columns will appear.
Background
Terrified. That is the best way that I can describe the feeling of waking up on the morning of November 11, 2000 for the Scott County High School Invitational. All of those feelings of confidence from Thursday’s practice dissipated and today was the day that an actual tournament was going to happen. Going to an unfamiliar place, being around unfamiliar people, and being in a tournament whose rules I loosely understood was not my idea of fun. I had been to many academic team competitions before but nothing compared to this because all of the performances that day would be on my shoulders and no team would back me up. My morning was a blur as I got up, showered, dressed in my competition suit, and my always early riser father drove me over to the high school to the bus for my first-ever forensic trip.
At this time Scott County was a decent-sized program in the state. Its coach, Susan Moore, was a fixture of the Kentucky forensic community. Its star was a Congress competitor by the name of Simon Willet, who would go on to make the final round of NFL Nationals in the Senate. Scott County was an enormous high school that housed close to 2,000 students. The county owed its size to Toyota, who received tax credits to come to Kentucky from Martha Layne Collins, Kentucky’s only female governor, in the 1980s. In my career I would attend three tournaments there and one maxim always held true: Do not trust the maps. One would use the maps to get to competition rooms and end up running into walls because they were not labeled!
Another morning. Another bus in front of Danville High School in the early morning hours to go to a tournament.
I would not be the only Danville extemper in the tournament. In addition to myself, my friend Bill Ellis, and math classmate Joel Meister, and junior Rowan Haigh, our squad was captained by senior Julie McGlothlin. Julie was coming off a strong junior season of a third place finish at the Kentucky High School Speech League (KHSSL) State Tournament and an octo-final finish at the National Catholic Forensic League (NCFL) Grand National Tournament. She was also our team’s “File Queen,” a title given to the person who was in charge of getting the files to the bus and school before and after competitions and making sure everyone did their part in keeping them up to date. I did not have a ton of interaction with Julie before this tournament as she practiced on a different day than Bill, Joel, and myself but I understood I was a clueless freshman and she knew what she was doing.
There were about 20 extempers in the field, including the five of us. I knew no one there but Joel noted to me shortly after we arrived “Oh, Lexi is here.” This was in reference to Lexi Menish, who competed for Assumption High School in Louisville. The year before Lexi was a fourth place finisher in extemp at NCFL Nationals, beating Kentucky state champion Ryan Martin, who took fifth (As of 2023 this is the last time that Kentucky had two national extemp finalists in the same year). Lexi was also a national finalist in impromptu speaking at NFL Nationals the previous summer. Joel quickly brushed me up on the details.
I waited for an eternity to draw. It is a curse of being a single-entered competitor because you have no excuse to move up and go somewhere else. Joel killed time by reading a book about a personal subject of interest: Osama bin Laden. This being November 2000, Mr. Bin Laden was still a primary enemy of the United States after attacks on American embassies and the U.S.S. Cole off the coast of Yemen years before. But he no one could fathom the chaos he would unleash within a year’s time. Veteran me would have killed time by reading a file. But dumb freshman me just twiddled my thumbs and wasted time until it was finally time to draw.
Note: For round summaries, I will attempt to “rebuild” rounds as much as possible. I will provide the question, my speech time (at least for early speeches), and an outline of what I said. Unfortunately, if a judge did not write down my three points or answer, I have no idea how I answered some of these topics, especially since I was a chameleon in extemp that would be conservative in one round and liberal the next. I will also provide my ranking.
Round 1
Question: Has the stereotype of Birmingham, Alabama changed?
Speech Time: 5:50
Ranking: 6
Reflection: If any extempers are out there wondering what we used to talk about prior to the September 11 terror attacks, this is it. Like seriously, what is this question? Maybe NSDA should use this the next time the national tournament visits the city. The history teacher in me today would crush this by giving an overview of Reconstruction, the later Civil Rights Movement, and the tragedies that took place. But at the time of this speech, I was relatively unaware of Birmingham’s history and the files were of little use. I do remember there was a random Newsweek article in our “Racial Tensions” file that gave me some context but I shudder to think of the ignorance I unleashed in this round.
I can still remember this first speech, the nervous feeling of going in and handing my topic to a middle-aged woman who was my judge. The room was in the interior of the building and had no windows. Oh, and the speech was a disaster from the jump. I was trying to remember the good structure of an extemp speech that I had rehearsed for so many speeches in practice for Mr. Meadows and blanked. I kept talking but I could sense that what I was saying was nonsensical. And when I stumbled I made a frustrated face. Overall, the speech was a stumbling and bumbling mess.
The judge did not say much on the ballot but this is a good summary: “Sometimes what you were saying didn’t make sense. Showed signs of frustration early.” Yeah, no kidding! I would take a good lesson from this round, though: If things are not going right during a speech, never let the audience know. I always wished that I got this judge again when I got better but it never happened. They have the unique accolade of seeing me at my absolute worst.
The judge also made an interesting comment for my first speech, telling me that I did not need a notecard to speak with. Like many novices, I used a notecard to write down my sources, petrified that I could not remember them. I wish I had taken this advice earlier!
I could have moped about this round but the nice thing about speech tournaments is that the preliminary activity is always moving! So it was time to return to draw for another round.
Round 2
Question: How are women redefining the world?
Speech Time: 5:45
Ranking: 2
Reflection: So we know that Scott County did not organize their extemp topics by topic area as we draw another social issues topic for round two. While the first round had a very specific topic, this was broad and I was confident preparing a speech because we had a “Women’s Rights” file that gave me lots of material. Unfortunately, as a freshman I do not think I understood the word “redefine” well because the judge in this round criticized me for not talking about women redefining the world until the end of the speech. This judge also had a good piece of advice: use the key word of the question more in the speech.
While the analysis was not good – which is expected of a novice – the other parts of the speech won the judge over. The stumbles from round one were gone, the structure was good, and I got high marks for eye contact. It is a good lesson that if you work hard as a novice on delivery that is worth its weight in gold because most judges are going to hone in on that. People may not know where Croatia is and may not read the news regularly. But even a lay judge knows what is good or bad speaking based on their life experiences so if you cannot speak clearly, maintain eye contact, and have good posture then you are going to pay for it on the ballot.
One nice bonus of this round is that I hit Julie. She beat me but I thought it was cool that a teammate and I took the top two spots in a prelim round. You have to celebrate the small stuff when you start, right?
Round 3
Question: Should collegiate gambling be illegal?
Speech Time: 5:50
Rank: 2
Reflection: A run of weird topics finishes up preliminary rounds for the tournament. Gambling was not widespread in the United States in November 2000 and this is before the online poker boom of 2003-2004. We did have a “Gambling” file, though, and I was able to find a few articles on the topic that I then extrapolated to college students for the speech, which probably helped on an analytical level.
My judge for this round was Bobbie Worrix, a former competitor for Pike County Central High School in interpretation events. Worrix would later coach for us at Danville by the time that I was a senior, so it is interesting that he was a critic at my first speech tournament.
What made the feedback funny for this round is that I had been getting comments in rounds one and two about being too monotone. However, Worrix liked my style of speaking and thought it was great. He only criticized how the introduction was stilted and could have captured one’s attention better. Attention getting devices (AGD) were the bane of my existence in forensics, a continuity that would plague me for much of my career.
The reader can also see that my time at this tournament was consistent. I am clocking in at 5:45-5:50 for each round. Obviously, getting the time of my speeches closer to seven minutes was an area of improvement.
With prelims done, the team boarded a bus and went for a quick lunch at the local McDonald’s since Scott County must not have offered a lot to eat. When we returned, limited prep postings were made in the cafeteria for the top six. I did not clear. I should have watched the final round but for the only time in my life I opted instead for Humorous Interpretation, where I saw Roderick Justice of Pike County Central destroy the competition. He would go on later that season to take fifth at NCFL Nationals in Dramatic Performance. Julie placed 2nd in extemp. Lexi won the tournament and we would not see her again until the state tournament in March.
Post-Tournament Thoughts
When we had a long bus trip back home, Mr. Meadows would play what he called “The Happy Sheet Game.” He would be at the front of our bus with the ballots as Murphy drove and call out someone’s name for each ballot that went to the back. Being the superstitious type, I made it a habit to collect my ballots and not look at them until Mr. Meadows had finished distributing paper.
After not clearing at the tournament, I figured that I did terrible. I had not yet developed that “speech compass” of knowing how I was doing at a competition. I knew the first round was terrible but the last two were tossups. As I looked at the ballots, I was shocked by how well I performed. I did a double and triple take that I got two second place ranks in the last two preliminary rounds. Then, after I processed it I was incensed that I was denied a finals appearance at my first tournament because of a bad first round speech. What made some of that sting less was that I beat Joel in the third round even though he did not use a notecard. Extemp was not Joel’s primary event but it still felt empowering to beat a veteran member of the team, even if it was just one round.
When I got up in the morning I was not sure if I was cut out for this forensics thing. For most of my life I was just average in a lot of the extracurriculars. In baseball, I would get to play three innings because the coach had to put me in the field and let me bat. Any athletic teams that I were on were cursed with .500 records and exited in the first round of the playoffs. For academic team, I was a second tier player who got substituted in for blowouts as another student was better at history. I had never found my niche at something that I could excel in. But on that hour-long bus trip home I realized that by putting in some hard work – and what that meant I was not quite sure – I could do very well at this new activity. As a competitive person I wanted to be the best and by the time I got home I made it my mission to work to improve with each competition and began to set a series of small goals: I wanted to get a first place rank in a round, I wanted to make finals and place in the top six, I wanted to be on my team’s slate as a competitor for the state tournament, and by the end of the season I wanted to be the best competitor on my team.
I still like to say that you do one of two things at a competition: You win or you learn. After Scott County, I learned a lot about how a tournament worked and how well I could do. And I could not wait to get back on the road, suit up, and do it again.