Ricketts earns state title in Impromptu Speaking
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POLSON — Picture this: A student competing in impromptu speaking is handed a notecard with a quote or a cartoon dealing with cultural, moral or social issues. Then she has three minutes to write a three to five minute speech on the topic. At the end of the preparation time, the student delivers the speech to the judge, then sits down to wait for the other speakers to work through the same process.
Strike fear in your heart?
Well, Molly Ricketts repeated this same procedure four or five times per speech meet in a season that stretches from October through January.
Columbia Falls students were her toughest competition, she said, as well as Loyola Sacred Heart speakers. The Polson High School team also went to a couple of AA meets, Molly said, where there were 80 kids in impromptu speaking.
The top six competitors in each speech event in the Class A Divisional Speech Debate and Drama meet in Libby advanced to state competition in Laurel.
“Divisionals were pretty tough,” Molly said. “Very few at state were what I’d faced at divisionals.
Molly made finals at divisionals and was one of 19 Polson High School speech, debate and drama competitors who traveled to Laurel for the state meet on Jan. 28 and 29.
And she spanked ‘em. Molly’s score at the end of the day was 13; she received ones (the best possible score) in all the regular rounds, a two in semi-finals and a three in finals and was state champion in impromptu speaking. The second-place finisher scored 28.
“Molly was our star,” PHS head coach Jon Petersen said. “She absolutely crushed the competition.”
Petersen said she did an excellent job of including current events in her analysis; she even mentioned the riots in Egypt in one of her rounds.
In finals, Molly said the topic was a quote from architect Frank Lloyd Wright.
Wright said, “If it keeps up, man will atrophy all his limbs but the push-button finger.”
An easy topic, Molly said, as opposed to quotes or cartoons the meet directors didn’t think through or a quote at an earlier meet that described cars as lemons. Molly said no one in her event knew what that implied. Almost all adults she polled knew, however.
This was Molly’s first year competing in impromptu speaking. She’d participated in drama events her freshman, sophomore and junior years, but Molly said drama had just gotten too easy.
“I was terrible when I first started,” Molly said. “I cried in front of everybody (as a freshman.)”
But she worked with her coach and got better. Molly likes impromptu with its wide variety of topics. When she speaks, she pretends she is talking to one person.
“(Impromptu) is a lot like snowboarding,” she said. “You see a jump coming up. Don’t think about it too much, just do it.”
Another plus is that she wants to be a prosecuting attorney so she thought impromptu speaking might help her prepare for her future career.
