Victories drawn after latest school speech competition

Speech competition winner Lennox Winitana (third from right) and runners-up Lily Trow (third from left) and Urmandip Sekhon with judges and sponsors.

For William Colenso High School and Taradale High School the scores are now drawn at five-all after Wednesday's 15th annual Napier Secondary Schools Speech Competition staged by Taradale U3A (University of the Third Age).

Which means next year's event at Taradale Town Hall will be a tie-breaker.

This year's competition was taken out by Lennox Winitana of William Colenso College who won the speech trophy as judged by members of Toastmasters clubs from across the region, and the People's Choice Award sponsored by Paper Plus Taradale.

For her speech, titled "Time not wasted - investing in the younger generation", she received $300 cash and a $150 prize which will serve as an Oratory Award for her school library.

"A very deserving winner," was how U3A member and organising team member Franki James put it.

"It's not every year that the audience necessarily agrees with the three judges who come from Toastmasters clubs in the region but, this year, there was little doubt in anyone's mind," Ms James said.

It was a mix of getting the audience engaged, entertained and informed while the judges looked to award points on a more technical basis, taking criteria such as elocution, body language and relevance to the given topic into consideration.

Topics for the speech competition all had to bear some relevance to the generation gap and the impact of youth and age upon each other.

Runner-up was Lily Trow of Napier Girls' High School with her topic "Youth has no age" and in third place came Koyana Shastri of Taradale High School who spoke on "What we can learn from each other".

Urmandip Sekhorn of Sacred Heart College, who was fourth and highly commended, enamoured herself of the audience with her choice of topic "Youth is the gift of nature while age is a work of art".

"And, when all is said and done, who can argue with that?" Ms James said.