Every year for the past three years, from January to May, a team of six people- my amazing coach, four schoolmates and I proceed to beat the crap out of any opposing team in the SSSDC (Singapore secondary schools debating championship). In the process, the stress drives us nuts and we make silly mistakes.
I was the second speaker for my team and my speech was along the lines of how fair play in sports is important.
On a Tuesday, my team and the teacher-in-charge of debates gathered to make some edits to my speech. We were sitting in a circle and throwing arguments back and forth for our upcoming debate. The introduction to my speech went like this-
Good evening ladies and gentlemen,
My speech is about the importance of fair play in sports. No one is going to argue that fair play in sports isn’t important…and so on
My coach was advising me on how to improve my style as a speaker. "See Shrutz, " she said, "your speech and arguments are good but you need to emphasize on certain words in your speech otherwise, you sound monotone. That won't work well for our team."
She thought for a while and then said, "for example, when you start your introduction maybe you could do it like this- Good evening ladies and gentlemen! My speech is about the importance of fair play in sports. No one is going to argue that foreplay in sports isn’t important"
I looked up at her startled, wondering if I had heard her right. She was continuing nonchalantly with the rest of the speech with the word foreplay replacing fair play. Awkwardly, I glanced at my team mates to see if they had heard the same thing that I had. My reserve speaker began giggling and my teacher-in-charge was trying hard not to laugh.
My coach stopped abruptly and looked at us suspiciously, "what?" "Nothing, " I said quickly to avoid the embarrassment. My reserve speaker and teacher-in-charge burst out laughing.
This was what my speech sounded like after her little mistake.
Good evening ladies and gentlemen
My speech is about the importance of foreplay in sports.
No one is going to stand here and argue that foreplay in sports isn’t important. Instead, the contention is on what upholds foreplay the best. Let us look at that.
Sports have always been for athletes to compete based on their natural abilities and the limit that they can push those natural abilities to. Foreplay in sports incorporates 3 concepts. Firstly, the value of excellence, secondly about giving one’s best on the field of play and thirdly the oath taken by athletes when participating in the Olympics as such-
In the name of all competitors, we promise to take part in the Olympics, respecting and abiding by the rules that govern it, committing ourselves to sports without doping and with foreplay, in the spirit of sportsmanship and for the glory of sports and the honor of our teams.
The reason why we choose to follow the Olympics value of foreplay is because other international competitions hinge on a similar meaning of this foreplay provided by the Olympics.
Currently, the issue of performance enhancing drugs have come to the extent that there are considerations whether performance enhancing drugs should be allowed in sports. This has caused us to deviate away from the main issue here which is foreplay.
Allowing athletes to take PED(performance enhancing drugs) dilutes the notion of foreplay. Athletes go against the oath taken by them because they violate the true spirit of sportsmanship by taking PED and enhancing their performance to have an unfair advantage of their competitors. This maligns the honor and glory of sports. The fact is that athletes have forgotten that sports aren’t just about winning but instead about foreplay.
Eventually we had to tell her what was wrong . Also, it was quite awkward on the day of my debates competition because every time I mentioned the word fair play in my speech (being warned not to use foreplay even by mistake) a little giggle would go up from my supporters.
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Now, I know this was probably the MOST HILARIOUS thing in real life, and I'd probably die laughing, too, but in retelling it's not actually that funny because we're missing the continuous giggle effect. We don't hear others laughing or see them laughing, so we don't get the funny-effect from them. Instead, we have to depend on just the words you're showing us on a screen, and sadly these words aren't as funny, mostly because the word foreplay doesn't conveniently create double meaning sentences, as far as I can tell, but just sits there as a word out of place, supposed to be funny of its own merit. It's not. Unless you're in a silly mood with a dirty mind.
I don't know why you have two different breaks at the introduction of this piece, though. As I've learned about outlines, you can have a part one without a part two, and separating the first paragraph with a line serves no purpose. It's all related, so let it all go together, yeah?
I don't know what can really be done to salvage it. It's fine as it is, but not spectacular, and because unfortunately the speech didn't actually make any humor, it can't be fixed UNLESS you rewrite the speech to include hilarious double meaning sentences. Including more situations, like weird tension between the team members and this coach? Maybe the coach is a bumbling old middle-aged woman, so that makes her seem so weird in comparison to foreplay, but then would she really be confident enough to lead a debate team?
By mentioning embarrassment, you take us away from laughing at the coach and remind us that this was a person who probably didn't want to be embarrassed, so that also stops the humor up a bit. I understand it was accurate, but it keeps the silliness from expanding.
Anyway, lemme know if you work on it again, and whether you have any questions. Good luck!
I'll edit the breaks in the story. I don't think I can re-write it because the humor was supposed to be in my speech itself but I'll keep what you said in mind for future pieces. Thank you for the review.
A short but sweet review for you today my friend.
You've written a good article here, with with right amount of humor without making it too inappropriate. The little introduction at the beginning is very well done and adds some nice icing to the cake. The language used is concise and clean and everything is put together rather well.
The only real qualms I've got with this are just a few grammatical mistakes. Namely the title which should have been written as such: Foreplay... In Sports? Notes on the capitalization and three dots in the ellipse. Other pieces of grammar to note would be spaces in front of parenthesis () and the capitalization of the first word in speech marks: "Your speech..." as well as capitalization after other punctuation marks such as ellipses.
Other than that, you did a rather nice job at writing this piece and it would make a rather nice article in a place like the funny stories section of a magazine because really, I myself was even giggling by the end of it. Thumbs up and a smiley face for the laughs from me!
Keep on writing.
- noninjaspresent >(> ==)>*
Thank you !
I'll keep that in mind and edit this.