Speech Contests

Spring Contest on March 20!!!

Every year there are two club speaking contests ( Contest Info )- one in the spring (International Speech Contest & Tall Tales) and one in the fall (Humorous Speech or Evalutation Contest). These contests are a great way to get your blood pumping and creative juices flowing. Members of the Stamford Chapter give speeches and are judged by a panel of fellow members. Winners are announced, with the top speakers moving on to the next level (which in the case of the Stamford Chapter means competing at the area level with the Norwalk, Purdue Pharma, and Mercer club). Winners of the Area Contest go on to the Division Contest and on up the Toastmasters hierarchy.

The contests provide members another venue for speaking which further helps build speaking skills. Because of the level of preparation that can go into these speeches, it is often said that speaking at the District level is equivalent to almost a year of normal club speeches!

Frequently, members of The Stamford Chapter are contest winners. In fact, one of our members (Ian Jeremiah) has gone on to the Regional finals five years in a row. Pretty impressive, considering that you have to win first place in Connecticut to qualify for the Regional finals! Here are some Stamford highlights of the more recent contests.

Fall 2006 - Area Contest: Humorous Speech & Evaluation contest

The Greater Stamford Toastmasters hosted the Fall Area contest. Below are the results...

Evaluation Contest
1st place - James Jorasch from Greater Stamford Toastmasters
2nd place - Bill Wren from Norwalk Toastmasters

Humorous Speech Contest:
1st place - Betsy Bown from Norwalk Toastmasters
2nd place - James Jorasch from Greater Stamford Toastmasters

The Area Contest was sponsored by the Greater Stamford Toastmasters. Big Thanks to those who helped with the contest!!!

Contest Master: Sylvia Zebrowski
Chief Judge: Peter Helmer
Judge 1: Ray Gonsalves
Judge 2: Jennifer Jaffe
Judge 3: Veronica Waks
Timer 1: Mai Dinh
Timer 2: Joe Genovese
Refreshments: Kasia Pawlus, Jennifer Jaffe
Sergeant-in- arms: Seizo Mazer

Spring 2004 - Club Contests

International Speech Contestants: James Jorasch, Melanie Szlucha, Joy Van Hemert, Jeremy Ulrich.

For our 2004 International Speech & Tall Tales Contest, we had a packed house of both members and guests. This year's contests featured both veteran and virgin contestants alike. One of our newest contestants even placed. All contestants should be recognized for their polished and well-presented speeches.

The results of the 2004 International Speech Contest were:

1st: Melanie Szlucha
2nd: James Jorasch

We do believe that this order of winners did beat the Las Vegas spread, so congratulations to all those folks who bet on our Immediate Past President, Melanie Szlucha to win it all!

Tall Tales Contestants: Russell Kenny, John Anello, James Jorasch.

The second contest of night was the Tall Tales Speech Contest. We are not sure but it is widely believed that our own President, James Jorasch, thought this was the "Humorous Tall Tales Speech Contest", because his speech had a number of audience members laughing out loud. With that being said, the other contestants in this round, John Anello and Russell Kenny gave nice presentations as well.


Without any further adue, here are the results of the 2004 Tall Tales Contest:

1st: James Jorasch
2nd: John Annello

This was John's first ever contest effort, so a big round of applause goes John for his 2nd Place finish. We hope that we will see him compete again in future contests. James might have beaten John this time around, but no one can be sure that John will not be on top in our next contest!

Did you miss all the fun? Do you want to see the contest so you can determine how to win, or beat certain individuals, in our next contest? Check the 2004 Spring Club Contests tape out from our video library.

Fall 2003 - Area Contest

Paul Bailo doing his hilarious table topics performance at the 2003 District Contest. Read the newspaper article.

For the 2003 Area D3 Humorous Speech and Table Topics Contest, hosted by the Greater Stamford Toastmasters, we had a lively and entertaining evening.

Competition was heated among the contestants from the various clubs that participated in each contest. There were representatives from Stamford (of course!), Norwalk and the relatively new Purdue Pharma.

For the Table Topics contest, our host and Area Governor Rich Frantz, choose the topic of: "What skill do you most hope to improve through Toastmasters this year and why?"

It was interesting to listen to the three different answers to this relevant question. Although everyone's response was good, the panel of Judges, headed up by the President of the Norwalk Club, Paul Shashaty, had to select the final winners. The results of the Table topics contest were:

1st: Paul Bailo - Stamford
2nd: Linda Blieck - Norwalk

After a refreshment break, we embarked on the Humorous Speech contest which covered a variety of topics from dating, to planning a surprise party, to a sample version of "Pre-Historic Toastmasters". Gilda Bonano, a rising star in the newly formed Purdue Pharma club, put in a strong performance in her first appearance at an Area Contest. However in the end, contest experiece seemed to pay the biggest of all dividends. Here are the results:

1st: James Jorasch - Stamford
2nd: Nancy Follis Wilms - Norwalk

Perhaps some of the funniest moments occured during the Awards Ceremony.
Did you miss it? Check it out on video.

Fall 2003 - Club Contest
For our 2003 Humorous Speech Contest we had a packed program of Table Topics and Humorous Speeches.

Competition was fierce among the eight participants that signed up for the Table Topics contest. The topic picked by our Toastmaster, Simone Morris, was: "You are the lawyer representing the Students in the case against them by the Recorded Music industry, plead your case to the audience".

It was amazing to see the various takes on the topic by the participants and even though everyone's response was good, our panel of judges could only pick three. The results of the Table topics contest were:

1st: Paul Bailo
2nd: Ed Carroll
3rd: James Jorasch

After a refreshment break, we embarked on the Humorous Speech contest which was highly competitive and had the audience rolling in laughter. Our very own President, James Jorasch, won the contest with his online dating speech. Past President Melanie Szlucha, came in a close second with her version of dating in the real world and finally Corey Willix came in third with his 'other side' speech. Did you miss it? Do you want to see it so you can determine how to win our next contest? Check the club contest out on video.

Spring 2003
For Spring 2003 contest, Geoff Gelman won the club International Speech competition while James Jorasch won the Evaluation contest. Both went on to the Area level competition where Geoff won again! Our warm congratulations to Geoff! Want to see more pictures from these events? Check out what we have for Area D3 Contest and the Division D Contest.

Geoff Gelman receiving First Place Award at 2003 Division D Contest from Paul Iltchenko

At the District level contest, yet again a Stamford Toastmaster shined brightly. Our own Geoff Gelman placed 2nd in the International Speech contest held May 10 at  the District Conference in Cromwell, CT. A simply outstanding effort. Geoff put his heart into the speech, but was ultimately edged out by a competitor who juggled during his entire speech! The winner will represent District 53 at the Region VII Conference.

Fall 2002

James Jorasch receiving the first place award from Paul Iltchenko

During the Fall 2002 contest period, James Jorasch won the club Extemporaneous competition and then went all the way up to the District level, winning first place there. Click here for more pictures from the event.

Upcoming Contests
The next speech contest to be held at the Stamford chapter will be the International Speech competition in the Spring of 2004. Furthermore, it will held in conjunction with the Speech Evaluation contest. The International Contest goes concludes at the TI Annual Conference, while the Speech Evaluation contest concludes at the District level. We wonder who will be the next star Stamford Toastmaster(s) proudly representing their club for this round.