As the 2005-06 school term draws to a close, the seniors on Tyrone High’s award-winning speech team gathered one last time to remember three years of public speaking success and to review the speaking skills they learned as members of the school’s 93-year-old team, which dates from 1913.
Senior Christopher Clark recalled his humorous rendition of the poem, “Shooting Rats at the Bibb County Dump”. At the same time, he realized that he will need to turn serious for commencement when he delivers the opening prayer for graduation 2006 on June 2.
Todd Boytim remembered his two-time win with the monster poem “Jabberwocky”, from Lewis Carroll’s “Alice in Wonderland”. Dustin Brown relished the victory he won when he presented his original short story entitled, “Love, Beatrice Style”, about a guy’s search for the perfect wife.
Junior Francesca Lambert joined the senior winners to celebrate her win with a poem entitled “Forgetfulness”, dealing with the tragedy of memory loss. Because she will complete her senior year as an American exchange student to Chili next year, Lambert celebrated her victory among this year’s Tyrone speech seniors.
Tyrone speech coach Richard Merryman commended this year’s senior team members for resurrecting the reputation of Tyrone’s 93-year-old speech team, first established at the Lincoln Avenue High School in 1913.
Said Merryman, “Surveying old Tyrone yearbooks about the victories of the Tyrone speech team in 1913 and 1914 at two, thunderous, well-attended debates with Huntingdon High, our senior speech team members committed themselves to rejuvenate speech at Tyrone High as a real sport, like it was in those long-ago days prior to World War I.”
Continued Merryman, “We also express our gratitude to Tyrone Athletic director Thomas Coleman and his energetic secretary Shelly Chronister for providing the speech team with bus transportation to our three competitions, thus validating our status as ‘a real sport’. Gifted teacher Mr. Kerry Naylor also deserves thanks for guiding some of our speech participants in journeys of the imagination.”
In addition to remembering their public speaking success, speech team seniors also reviewed the public speaking skills they learned during their tenure with the Tyrone speech team. The seniors agreed that their speech scoring sheets helped them to discover the duel set of skills needed by capable public speakers.
First, the scoring sheet emphasized that any original speech or oral literary interpretation requires content that is comprehensible, appropriate, convincing and interesting. Second, the scoring sheet emphasized that the speaker’s voice must demonstrate appropriate volume, expression, speed, pauses and clearness.
Concluded Merryman, “Rarely does a teacher encounter a group of students such as these Tyrone speech seniors who readily recognized the power of the spoken word. Without a doubt, these students realized what President John Kennedy understood when he said this of Prime Minister Winston Churchill – ‘During the darkest days of World War II, Churchill mobilized the English language to save western civilization’.
“And beyond that, in resurrecting speech as a real sport at Tyrone High, these Tyrone speech seniors comprehended the truth of what Theodore Hesburgh of Notre Dame University told a group of college athletes: a decade after graduation, almost everyone will have forgotten where and what they played. But every time they speak, everyone will know whether or not they received an education.”
