Some of the best public speakers in southern Saskatchewan showed their stuff during the Toastmasters International Area B18 competition at West Park Crossing on Saturday afternoon.
The event featured competitors from clubs in the Regina and Moose Jaw area speaking in the Humorous and International categories, bringing a wide range of oratory skills to the forefront in front of Toastmasters adjudicators.
“The competition went very well, we had some great speeches and they hit all their objectives,” said event host and Area B18 director Geremy Quiambao. “In Humorous, the main objective is to have fun and make it nice and funny and with International, it’s a speech that gives a message, a call to action or to inspire. All the speakers did very well on the different aspects of each speech.”
Margaret Ustupski turned out to bring the best to both worlds, as she took first place in both classes and will represent the area at the Division B championships in April.
Ustupski’s speeches – ‘To Tent or Not to Tent’ in the ‘Humorous’ division and ‘Invisible Scars’ in Internatonal – followed similar formats with three examples from her life.
For ‘Invisible Scars’, it was remembering a saying from long ago.
“Sticks and stones will break my bones but words will never hurt me,” said Ustupski, who hails from Regina. “It was based on the scars we get from words that are said to us during our life. So it’s how do we deal with those and how we deal with scars from something said to us. So I talked about three different stages in my life and what was said to me.”
‘To Tent or Not to Tent’ was all about the travails of camping and rain.
“Every time we tented, it rained” Ustupski said with a laugh. “So I talked about three different tenting experiences and gave reasons not to tent. The first one was rain, the second one was rain and the third one was rain.”
Ustupski felt her success came largely from her preparation, which included use of the Toastmasters’ Circle of Gold, which has members of the club all working together to help each other’s performances.
“It’ll even be the people who you’re competing against who will help you out,” Ustupski said. “It’s such a positive environment, we’re always pleased for how the other people did and now we’ll probably go home and send an e-mail to somebody and say ‘you did so well, but here’s a step you missed’ just to help them out some more.
“For anyone who isn’t confident, it’s a great place to work on confidence and learning public speaking… it’s a great group to learn things like that.”
Ustupski will now look to have similar success at the next step on the road to nationals and beyond when she competes at the Division championship in Regina.
“I’ve never made it to the District stage, so it’ll be great to have another chance to do that,” she said. “It’s just putting your best foot forward on a particular day and whoever is at their best will be the one who takes the prize. But we all learn something and we all gain.”
