My First Competition – Part 1

On May 2^nd, 2008, I won the Toastmasters District 38 Speech Contest.  I have to admit that I was a little shocked.  I honestly thought my speech “Wings and Chains,” would not win the area contest, let alone a district contest.  What surprised me even more, I was told a few weeks after the contest that the scoring wasn’t even close.  Apparently, I won in a run away victory.

 

Since that day I have spoken to many people about that speech and about the speeches that I had written for the Region 7 contest.  In that time I have come to realize what made that speech work.  I also came to realize the mistakes I was making when I was writing a lot of my speeches.

 

For the next few weeks, I plan to tell you the story of what I learned in my four years of membership in Toastmasters and competing in the international contest.  I will especially tell you about everything I’ve learned in the two months between the District 38 contest and the Region 7 contest. I hope you will walk away with some of the knowledge I have gained and make yourself a better speaker.

 

I joined Toastmasters in March of 2003.  I joined because I was asked to attend some Township Planning Commission meetings and I wanted to feel more comfortable in front of people.  I had no idea about the whole competition thing.  I really didn’t even think about competing until I gave a speech for my Competent Communicators manual.  The speech was called “The Cursed Tribe,” and it was a completely made up story of how the Berks County area in Pennsylvania was cursed by an ancient Indian tribe who was wiped out by another tribe years before the white man arrived in the area.

 

I had lots of true historical references in it to add credibility and I studied it well.  It was an exciting story and I really enjoyed writing and practicing it.  The story was apparently so well written and delivered that most people in the room though it was real.  I ended up answering questions about the speech, and about the history of Berks County, for the rest of the night.  As I was leaving, the president of our club stopped me and point blank told me that I should tell that story in the next contest.

 

I gave the speech in April of that year so I had a long time to think about it.  As you can guess, I did tell that story in the 2006 International Speech Contest.  I started revising and smoothing out the story about two months ahead of time.  I was excited about the contest, but I also knew it would be a challenge.  I was competing against two grizzled veterans of Toastmasters.

 

The preparation was long, but finally the day of the competition had arrived and the butterflies where going nut!

 

Come back to find out what happened during that competition.