2013 Fall Club Contest

By Andy Paultanis

 

Competition.

The Olympics.  The  World Cup, the Stanley Cup, the Ryder Cup, the World Series, the Super Bowl, the NBA Finals and the NCAA National Championships.

Competition isn’t limited to athletics.  Turn on any cable television and most reality shows are predicated on competition from Dancing with the Stars, American Idol, Survivor, Toddlers and Tiaras, to cook-offs, fashion design competitions to MXC (Most Extreme Elimination Challenge).

Who can forget their spelling bees in grade school?  Several members of Katy Toastmasters help score high school academic decathlons and speech debates. 

Competition is important because it brings out the best in those who chose to compete.  Participants compete because it is fun.

Each year Katy Toastmasters has two speech contests in the Fall and Spring.  This year our Fall Club Contest will be on Thursday, August 15^th.   We start early because the winner of the club contest then competes against other Toastmaster Clubs at various stages of Area, Division and District levels. The Fall Club Contest will be "Tall Tales."

Everyone seems to have a tall tale about the gigantic fish that got away, the time they climbed Mount Everest with one hand tied behind their back, the time they saw a Big Foot at McDoanlds, their chance encounter with a Mermaid at Galveston or the time Uncle Bob was abducted by Aliens on Highway Six.

 

My Tall Tale would be more cultural, being from Michigan, about how Paul Bunyan and his blue ox Babe, engaged in a shoving match and created the Grand Canyon in Arizona.  I still believe this to this very day.

 

Below is a link to Toastmasters International with more information about  “Tall Tales”  (thanks Jody White for the link).

Toastmasters Tall Tales

The other venue for the night will be an Evaluation Contest.  One member will give a speech and other members will compete to give the best evaluation of the speech. 

Evaluations of prepared speeches are a critical component to Toastmaster meetings. Prepared speech presentations receive immediate positive and constructive reviews based upon the speech project of a member.

Another component  of the Fall Club Contest is not competition but cooperation.  As with every Katy Toastmaster meeting, it is a team effort of individuals supporting each other by participating in various important roles such as judges, to ballot counter to timers. 

It should be a fun night.  Join us.