My First Extemp Tournament

Extemporaneous speaking, more commonly referred to as extemp, is not the type of thing that gets people bloods boiling. Yet, it has always been the love of my life. I was in ninth grade when I found it.

“Matthew,” Mrs. Fujimoto, the head librarian said, as I sat at her desk. “There’s someone I’d like you to meet.”

She led me to the computer lab area of the library and there was a rotund gentleman, who introduced himself as, Mr. Alisna.

“Matthew likes to read,” she told him.

“You read a lot huh?” Alisna said, eyes fixed on my enormous knapsack.

“Yup,” I said, jumping up with excitement.

“Do you like to read the news?” His eyes were wider now and he was grinning.

“I do,” I had never thought that anyone would want me to read newspapers for fun.

“You can do extemp,” he declared, and I thought I won a prize.

Of course, extemp isn’t really the coolest and/or sexiest thing. Even in the world of high school forensics (the really pretentious name for speech and debate as a competitive activity) extemp is not considered cool. Oh wait, forensics is not really considered cool either, which basically means that I was doing the uncool thing amongst the uncool kids, it’s kind of like being Ann Coulter, only without the blatant hatred of humanity.

Extemp has a bad reputation largely because of the events perceived elitism. At the beginning of each round, competitors pull three questions about current affairs out of an envelope. Then, they pick one and have thirty minutes to prepare a seven-minute speech that must be delivered from memory, with source citations.

The very first question I ever answered was: will there ever be peace in the Middle East? I was given more than the normal 30 minutes, in fact, Mr. Alisna told me I could have an entire night. I immediately started researching looking into what prevented peace and why there was no peace and what could be done for peace. I was going to give the best extemp speech ever. The next day, I came in ready.

I don’t remember what I said. All I remember is what followed.

“What is the first rule of extemp?” Mr. Alisna asked me.

“Answer the question?” I asked.

“Yesssssss,” his voice rose cartoonishly through the elongated strand of Ss. “Did you answer it?”

“I think so,” I responded, as I was fairly confident I had answered the question.

“Well you didn’t. Also, you need to slow down you talk too quickly. I can barely understand you. This also makes you trip on your words. You stumble and garble and you had about 75 vocal pauses. Did you even work on this speech? If you have that much time, I expect you to give a good speech. Would you say that was a good speech?” He tapped his fingers on the test.

I stared at the floor, thinking back on the speech, what went wrong? “I’ll try harder.”

Mr. Alisna glowered at me, “I don’t want to see trying Matthew, I want to see results.”

I could feel that familiar tightness in my eyes, “Sorry.”

He sighed, and shot me a withering expression, “Don’t apologize, just do it.”

It was here that I think I started to cry. Or at least, that’s how Gabe Alisna tells the story. He also claims that whenever I got frustrated I would put my hands on my hips and elbows thrusting backwards like a pair of wings and shut my eyes. I’m not sure

“Ready for another question?” he asked.

A few weeks later, it was time for my first tournament. I had been working on extemp everyday after school and I was ready to kick everyone’s ass. Of course, it was a novice tournament meaning that everyone had no experience in the events they were doing. My mother dropped me off at the school at six AM, and I eagerly ran up to the team room to pick out a tie. The one I chose was red and black with diagonal stripes. Mr. Alisna insisted on tying it for me.

After, I was suited up. I had to carry the extemp boxes to the bus. Because of the nature of the event, back in those days, extemp required four large Rubbermaid Tubs full of newspaper articles, printed off online news sources and filed alphabetically by country or topic area. I had four of these. At the time, I weighed about 70 pounds. Each box had about 30ish pounds of paper inside. I struggled under the weight of the tubs as I galumphed it to the bus, struggling down the uneven concrete path, weaving to and fro. My arms shook, as my twig like arms tried to embrace the lumbering beast of plastic and paper.

We arrived at Saint Andrews Priory at 8 am, and after warm-ups, such as “I am a mother pheasant plucker, I pluck mother pheasants I am the most pleasant mother pheasent plucker to have ever plucked mother pheasants.” It was time. I walked into the prep room, set-up my boxes. Pulled out the yellow legal pad I’d grown accustomed to. I was sixth speaker, in the first round, which meant more time to read current events. I pulled a copy of US News and World Report, I had brought along just in case. The question I pulled after, fifty minutes of waiting, was something about China. Easy.

I whipped through files, pulled out articles, wrote down quotations, outlined. Scratched out things that didn’t work and put together facts in a way that allowed me to answer the question. I stood up after 20 minutes and stood in a corner and talked to the wall running through my points and sources. Suddenly, I heard the prep room proctor, “Speaker six please head to your round.”

On my way to the classroom, I ran through my speech in my head. It was going to be fine. I opened the door stepped inside. Walked to the center looked at the judges and began to speak.

“I had a nightmare the other night and there were monsters everywhere closing in, in the grocery store, and everyone of the monsters was made in China,” then, I dived straight into my content. I said the question verbatim, gave my answer, took two steps to the left to indicate I was transitioning to my first point. Then, two to the right to indicate I was moving to my second; two more to the right for my third, before walking back to the middle for my conclusion. It was so exciting, sharing all of this information with them. I carefully watched the time signals from the timekeeper and before long my time was up, and my speech was finished.

Speech and debate uses a ranking system, in each room, there are six competitors and the judges rank the competitors first to sixth with no ties. Every round is a fight for a one. At the novice tournament, the judges give the ballots directly after the round is finished. The five other competitors and I sat there waiting nervously after my speech, as we waited for the judges to finish writing. It wasn’t long before they started to hand out ballots. The first one hit my desk and I got the one. Then the other ballot came another one. There were two more rounds that day, four more judges, and though I didn’t know it yet, I would pick-up four more ones. I wouldn’t have cared.

I clutched those sheets of paper in my hand and skipped back to the tables where my team sat. I couldn’t wait to show Mr. Alisna.