2013 Rotary Speech Contest
Recently our club held its annual high school speech contest. The contest is open to high school students from public or private schools and those being home schooled. The contestants this year were Emmalise Hunter, Casey Hamilton and Chase Lott from Plant City High School; and Kylie Nelson and Chris Clemente from Durant.
Front Row: Kylie Nelson, Emmalise Hunter, Casey Hamilton
Back Row: Chase Lott, Chris Clemente
The theme for this year's contest was "Peace Through Service." The speeches where to be between 5 and 7 minutes and were judged on content, organization, delivery and staying within the time constraints.
The students did an excellent job. The speeches included many topics including: Polio plus and how Rotary has produced peace through service to the under privileged, how people must have peace in themselves before giving peace to others, the importance of making time in your busy life to serve, how schools offer great opportunities for service and how peace never leaves you .... it's just harder to find. Great insights from some outstanding students. The speeches were all great and all these students are "winners." The judges had very difficult decisions to make.
First place and a check for $100 were awarded to Casey Hamilton. Second place (and $50) went to Chris Clemente, Third place (and $50) went to Emmalise Hunter and Fourth place (and $25) went to Kylie Nelson. Casey and Chris will represent our club and the Plant City Daybreak Rotary club in the group round of the speech contest in Lakeland. Winners in the group round will compete in the final round of the speech contest at the District Assembly on May 11th at Rotary's Camp Florida.
Special thanks go to Rotarian Amity Kokochak who organized and moderated the contest. Thanks also go to the following Rotarians: Judges- Christine Miller, Jan Kokochak and Jodi Stevens, Time keeper- Jana Butler and Score keeper- Brett Mueller.
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