Multi 4-H Club holds 2013 Communication Competition

Chinook Multi 4-H Club Communication Competition participants
C. Davis photo

Chris Davis

I was honored to be asked to act as a judge for the Chinook Multi 4-H Club's 2013 Club Level Communication Competition, held on Saturday morning, February 9.  The competition had two main components, Public Speaking and Presentations.  Public Speaking was further divided into prepared and impromptu speeches.  My role was to be one of the judges for the Presentations. My fellow judges and I agreed afterward that it was very tough to decide between the presentations, as they were all of very high quality.

Our job was made easier by the fact that points were deducted by a timekeeper for presentations that went over their allotted time, which was probably a deciding factor in the final results.

MCs Jillana Hammond and Isaak Bustard
C. Davis photo

Jillana Hammond and Isaak Bustard did a highly creditable job as Masters of Ceremonies for the competition, introducing the participants and helping them beforehand with props and microphone setups.  They also kept the event flowing at an efficient but comfortable pace.

Participants:

Junior category

Aiden Bustard, Brooke Hammond, Matthias Eden, Cadence Sinnott, Justin Nelson, Tanner Wallace, Justin Nelson, Logan Deley, Jaxon Hammond.

Intermediate category

Taylor Deley and Sarah Kirby, Tyler Monk, Bryce Crawford, Bruce Kirby and Ryan Higginbotham.

Senior category

Tyler Higginbotham, Ashley Higginbotham.

The event began with the singing of 'O Canada' and the recitation of the 4-H pledge, which is as follows:

I pledge my head to clearer thinking, my heart to greater loyalty, my hands to larger service, and my health to better living for my club, my community, and my country.

We will be publishing some of the presentations and speeches over the next few days, particularly the ones that translate well into print.  Some of the presentations and speeches had visual aspects that preclude doing so, but were also of a very high quality.

Rugby

Ashley Higgenbotham

Ashley Higgenbotham broke the ice with her presentation about Rugby.  It became evident quickly that the sport is a very real passion of hers.  As someone who has reported on rugby without quite understanding it, I was quite pleased to receive a crash course in the basic elements of the game.  "You cannot understand rugby from the bleachers" she cautioned at one point, a phrase that will probably haunt me a little next rugby season, because I suspect (from experience) that she's absolutely correct in that assertion.

Related link: Friday, April 20, 2012 - Rugby season starts for Halton Hawks

How To Be Ethical

Bryce Crawford

Bryce Crawford was next, giving a prepared speech that gave his perceptions about the difference between ethical and unethical hunting.  "I think that hunting unethically makes the sport much simpler, easier, but it destroys hunting for many others, and demolishes the sport of hunting, possibly for generations to come,"  he said, explaining why the topic was important to him.

Birthdays

Justin Nelson
Myra Hammond photo

Justin Nelson gave a brief and humorous Impromptu Speech about birthdays, highlighting the importance of cake, friends, family, and presents.

How Cranes Work
Logan Deley's Presentation was illustrated by a large model of a crane he assembled from a kit, which was quite interesting visually and also a hit with some of the other kids in attendance (and perhaps an adult or three as well).  He expressed a fascination with cranes, mentioning how much he enjoyed a scene in 'The Amazing Spider-man' that features Spider-man swinging from crane to crane.

Logan Deley 'How Cranes Work'
C. Davis photo

"I thought I would research this topic, and I would present my findings to you today," said Deley. He named a number of industries that use cranes, the parts of the crane, using his model to demonstrate various workings and parts.

Life Without Electronics
Tyler Monk's Impromptu Speech pointed out changes to our society that came about in the fields of communications, medicine, and construction because of electronics.

The Big Bear
Aiden Bustard's Speech 'The Big Bear' was an entertaining tale of an ursine encounter.  It also makes an entertaining read.  Click here for the full story.

My Snowboard and I
Jaxon Hammond's Presentation was highly visual.

Jaxon Hammond
Myra Hammond photo

"I'm on the chairlift.  The sun is warming my cheeks and the ground below me is white.  I'm excited to get to the top.  Once I do, I can fly down the hill."

"This is one of my favourite sports," said Hammond.

He explained the history of the sport, demonstrated how his snowboarding boots worked, and showed off some of the basic techniques of the sport.

"All of my instructors have said that I just need to keep practicing and grow up big and strong so I can do more tricks.  I'm still working on the growing part.  I'm getting braver and I've tried some small jumps this year.  At the ski hill there's a run called the Tumbleweed.   Well, this year I tumbled down the Tumbleweed twice."

"If I snowboard all day, my legs get tired  and I'm pooped, but I love it. I tried to teach my dad once.  He doesn't totally suck, he's just not that good."  

The Secret Life of Coyotes

Sharp dressed young man:
Tanner Wallace

Tanner Wallace gave a Speech about coyotes, which included a description of how they look, their varied colourings, and other notable attributes.  I learned that coyotes are only found in North and Central America.  He explained that  they are "found all over southern Canada more now than ever because of areas where wolves have been driven out and coyotes have come in."

Tanner explained that coyotes were good at hiding, and are spreading parasites to people's pet dogs.

"Coyotes will scavenge on dead animals, or even people's garbage.  They usually hunt small game such as rabbits, gophers, mice, baby deer, and sometimes newborn calves.  Because of this almost all farmers think they are bad, but they are good. They reduce rodent populations."  

Tanner explained that coyotes were semi social animals that usually mate for life, and sometimes form packs.

"They are not as social as wolves, who are almost always in a pack."

He said coyotes were usually diurnal, active in the daytime, but around human populations often turn nocturnal.

He also explained their mating habits.  He said wolves and porcupines were major threats to them.

Parents
Bryce Crawford's humorous Impromptu Speech about parents is unprintable here, because his parents know where I live...

How To Make Homestyle Pizza

Ryan Higgenbotham and Bruce Kirby

Bruce Kirby and Ryan Higgenbotham joined forces to give an elaborately prepared Presentation about Homestyle pizza making.  They enlivened it with humour, colourful signage, and props and ingredients.

Their tag-team style of presenting was very engaging, similar in style to a TV cooking show.  A very tasty presentation.

Halloween
Aiden Bustard's Impromptu Speech was brief, outlining what he liked about Halloween.

Rescuing Frost
Brooke Hammond's Presentation was an interesting yarn about a cat she an her family rescued. You can read it in its entirety by clicking here.

My Farm

Matthias Eden's Presentation focused on his family's farm, which is located on the Cowboy Trail, ten minutes north of Lundbreck.  He used large prints of photographs to illustrate various aspects of the farm and his presentation.

Matthias Eden

"We offer horse boarding, and a pretty place to ride.  We have one barn, and we are going to build another."

"Our house is right down here.  This is our barn, that's our old barn.The new barn will have more box stalls, and I'll have to clean them."

"I have an old sorrel horse named Red.  He's 28 years old.  I don't use him for 4H riding.  Instead I use an appaloosa named Apache.  She belongs to our neighbours.  This is at 4H, me riding Apache."

"Our neighbours are Randy and Ginny Donahue.  She's an awesome horse when you get along good. My dad has two horses, named Bailey and Trigger.  Bailey is a sorrel horse with four white socks, and Trigger is a palomino.  We also have a dog, named Roscoe."

"Roscoe is my best friend.  Roscoe likes to retrieve sticks, and collect bones.  This spring, I plan to have chickens, so I can sell eggs to my neighbours.  They will be free range chickens that will lay brown eggs."

There is a nice creek that runs trough our property.   It's called Todd Creek.  In the winter when the creek freezes over, I go ice skating with my brother Marcus and my sister Ava. We build a fire near the creek, roast marshmallows, and drink hot chocolate.   In the summer, the creek is good for swimming and fishing.  Sometimes my dad throws us in the creek, by surprise.  While we are falling, we do tricks in the air.  My sister, Ava, screams the most when my dad throws her in.  We all love it when we find a deep pool to swim in."

"The farm can be really busy with chores, construction, cleaning up, and haying.  The rest of the time, the ranch is one fun place to be."

Wheat

Cadence Sinnott gave an effervescently informative dissertation about wheat for her Presentation.  Using a slideshow she demonstrated the various stages of growth, based on a growing experiment she did in her home, which she began after a sunny day outing with her mom.

Fishing Trip with My Grandparents
Justin Nelson's interesting fishing tale, his Speech entry in the competition,  can be read in its entirety by clicking here.

Old and Modern Western Fashion

Taylor Deley and Sarah Kirby
Myra Hammond photo

Taylor Deley and Sarah Kirby joined forces for their Presentation, a frolic through some of the western-style fashions of the past and present.  Their witty style brought to mind similar presentations (on different themes)  I've seen at conventions and Home and Garden shows.  It was very visual, and I hope they will consider putting something together for publication here.  They were very well prepared and polished in their delivery.

Tyler Monk
Myra Hammond photo

Online Gaming - Fear, Facts, and Fiction
To read Tyler Monk's  Speech about online gaming click here.

My Pet
Tanner Wallace gave a brief Impromptu Speech about his pet dog Halo, telling of the fun they get up to around the farm and with friends.

The Importance of Speech

Tyler Higgenbotham

"I know at this time of year, and at the last two years of presentation, how most of my fellow 4-H members are feeling.  They feel nervous and edgy, some do not want to do it. A lot of people do deal with stage fright, like me, as you can see, about getting up and speaking in front of people for a number of reasons."

Higgenbotham explained the uncomfortable feeling one gets when being judged "as we are being judged today, of course."

"The reason why I do speeches and why it's important is that we can learn to speak publicly in case we want to pursue any careers later in life that would involve us getting out in front of people in the public and explaining our ideas, and telling what we would like to see happen in the world.  Another important part of speech is that we develop better social skills, so we aren't always shy, we aren't always looking down when we need to talk to people like this, so we can look them straight in the eyes."

"It's more polite to do that, I guess."

"We do have improv speech in our society. We were all shy, and if we didn't want to say anything, we couldn't really have a civilized society. That's another reason why speech is important, to practice speaking on days like this. Even though most of us do get afraid we do get up here and speak. We still need to do it, develop it, somehow. We can't just do it at our homes, or with our friends or our family, because then we just get used to talking with them, and we don't develop any more social skills than that. To speak publicly can be beneficial of course."

"A lot of politicians and celebrities you see on tv always speak, and deliver speeches to tell what they would like to see happen, or to tell certain stories for the media."

Judges remarks: Reeve Berg 

Reeve Bjorn Berg

Municipal District of Pincher Creek Reeve Bjorn Berg spoke on behalf of his fellow Presentation judges.  He explained the importance of humour in public speaking.  "Be a cartoon.  I learned this at the Pincher Creek Poetry Gathering a long time ago.  When you get up in front of an audience of four or five hundred people and you have a guitar that you have to strum and you can't even bend your fingers to play the frets because you're just paralyzed with fear, you suddenly realize that actually they're just there to be entertained and if you can't entertain yourself up there then there's something the matter. So put on the big hat, wear the boots, show off the buckle, be the cartoon."

"Have fun, because that's what it's all about.

On behalf of the judges he explained the difficulty of the task assigned us.   "The presentation quality was so high.  It was terrific."

"It's really difficult when you have such good quality speakers."

"The highest standard showed off when you answered your questions.  Everybody knew that you were engaged.  You answered them with confidence, with humor, off the cuff, you looked at your audience and paid attention.    Capture that feeling next time you're up there.  Start with that feeling."

He encouraged the participants to avoid reading and instead speak using their written material as reference only when they actually know the material well.

"What you learn here will engage others and yourself for the rest of your life.  Great job."

Judges remarks: Lexi Mensaghi

Lexi Mensaghi

"I have very similar things to say," said judge Lexi Mensaghi, "but I'm not a politician so it won't be as polished or so long."

"Well done!  It takes a lot of courage to come up here and stand here and talk for more than four minutes. It takes a lot of courage and it takes a lot of skill and you demonstrated both today.   I remember when I was in Grade 5, so  my second year of 4-H, I got up andIreadmyspeechlikethisandIneverlookeduponce and my knees were shaking so bad I could hardly stand up.  And it was scary.  And I didn't do a good job.  All of you today did  much better than I did then, but with practice and time I found that I even started to like it."

Awards:



First Junior Demonstration/Presentation: Jaxon Hammond
Second Junior Demonstration/Presentation: Taylor Deley and Sarah Kirby
Third Junior Demonstration/Presentation: Logan Deley

First Junior Prepared Speech: Tanner Wallace
Second Junior Prepared Speech: Brooke Hammond
Third Junior Prepared Speech: Aiden Bustard

First Intermediate Demonstration/Presentation: Bruce Kirby and Ryan Higginbotham
First Senior Demonstration/Presentation:  Ashley Higginbotham

First Intermediate Speech: Tyler Monk
Second Intermediate Speech: Bryce Crawford

First Senior Prepared Speech:  Tyler Higginbotham

Related links:
The Big Bear - Aiden Bustard

Fishing Trip with My Grandparents - Justin Nelson
Online Gaming: Fear, Fiction and Fact - Tyler Monk
Rescuing Frost - Brooke Hammond

Above and below:  Judges
Myra Hammond photos