Mark Epstein, long time member and recent President of Voyagers Toastmasters– one of San Diego’s most dynamic and experienced Toastmaster Cubs, was crowned the winner of the Area 12 Toastmaster International Speech Contest that was held March 16, 2013.

It was a tough contest, with lots of great speeches, but Mark Epstein made Voyagers proud as his speech took first place.  His touching and poignant speech about his sister grabbed the audience’s hearts and the speech judges’ ballots. He will be representing Voyagers and Area 12 at the upcoming Southern Division contest on May 5, 2013 to be held at Solar Turbines, downtown San Diego.

Good Morning Voyagers!

I’d like to start off the week congratulating our International Speech and Evaluation Contest Winners! What an exciting contest we had!

Congratulations to Michel Scharrf for winning first place in the Speech Contest . Michel did a fantastic job with his story “Emmas Story”. A wonderful inspiring original story of following your dreams!  

In second place, was Justin Salbato, and third place, Beth Bateman!
And special thanks to Rob Latimer, Christine McDannell for also competing, you did a fantastic job.

The Evaluation contest was won by Rob Latimer, who gave his very thorough and excellent evaluation on Evanthia Basilico’s speech, our guest speaker from Adventurers Club.  
Second place was won by Matt Slater, and third place was Jeffrey Greco.  And special thanks to Mark Imhoff and Tony Dixon, who also competed.

Did you miss the contest?  Not to worry, you can see Michel and Rob both compete at the AREA CONTEST on Saturday, April 24th at Solar Turbines!  Please mark your calendars and come out to support our Voyagers members as they compete against the other clubs in Area 12.  The Area 14 contest will also be held at the same contest – so you get two contests in one!

Putting together a contest is great deal of work, and takes a team effort to make it a success.  I’d like to take this opportunity again to thank the volunteers who helped make our contest the best it has ever been!

Terry Hewins,  Toastmaster
Chief Judge,  Karen Woolsey
Timers, Donna Gillen & Amy Gilstrap
Ballot Counters, Jerry Campana, Happy Aston & Amber Toland Perry
Sgt of Arms/Pledge – Lindsay Langford

And of course All of our Contestants, and our Guest Speaker, Evanthia!

Best Regards to everyone, and I hope to see you all at our next meeting,

Trisha Landoni