 "Photo: Ricardo Sanchez / The Advocate")
Students informed, entertained and enticed spectators through vocal expression at the Intramural Speech Tournament held in the Liberal Arts Building Thursday afternoon.
Open to all Contra Costa College students, the tournament consisted of two rounds for competitors to participate in impromptu, informative, persuasive and oral interpretation of literature speeches.
Instructors, faculty members and experienced students on the Speech and Debate Team judged each round by scoring students based on their performance and writing critiques on individual ballots, speech department Chairwoman Connie Anderson said.
Isis Hao, a student who addressed the adverse effects of capital punishment in her persuasive speech, said that these events raise awareness about different departments.
“It creates a lot of interest, and speech is a good thing to know,” she said.
The speech department hosted the tournament and the culinary arts department served food to competitors and judges.
The event is meant to be more of an end of the semester celebration than a strenuous competition and is aimed to attract students to join the Speech and Debate Team, Dr. Anderson said.
Registration began at 3 p.m. and the first round started at 3:30 p.m., as students dispersed to give speeches in rooms on both floors of the LA Building.
In the impromptu round, students were provided a strip of paper with three topics listed on it and had a minute to prepare a five-minute speech.
Student Emily Cristales received the Barack Obama quote: “We need to internalize this feeling of excellence. Not many folks spend a lot of time trying to be excellent.” She then utilized it in her speech about each person creating his or her own definition of excellence.
Each category of speech had four winners, all of whom were announced at the end of the tournament in LA-100. Winners in impromptu were Cristales, Margarita Romo-Romo, Deborah Walker and William Maltez.
Early childhood education major Katie Dach said she recited a persuasive speech against police brutality toward the mentally ill, which remains an important issue to her after losing her brother to such an event.
Persuasive speeches help people break out of their shells, research and let others know about topics they feel passionate about, Dach said.
Winners in the persuasive speech competition included Melissa Simon, Ahmad Khater, Velma Gonzalez and Christina Rathavongsa.
Speech professor Julie LaBrincha said students brought a lot of positive energy and commitment to their speeches.
Among the oral interpretation speeches during the second round, student Kelan Carrizosa performed a story about a young, gay adult coming to terms with his definition of a “man,” which won him first place.
Other winners in oral interpretation were Alexa Grace Belan and Montario Pierce.
Winners in informative speech were Vanessa Herrera, Khater, Gary Carlstrom and a tie for fourth place between Alex Hale and Luis Castillo.
Contact Alexandra Waite at awaite.advocate@gmail.com
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