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Nathan Leys competed for Des Moines Roosevelt High School (IA). Last year, he became the 2013 NFL National Champion in International Extemporaneous Speaking. During his career, Nathan also notched victories at the Yale Invitational (2012), Glenbrooks (2012), and St. Mark’s (USX-2011). He also won the Exhibition Round at last season’s Montgomery Bell Academy Extemp Round Robin and was a three time Iowa state champion in extemporaneous speaking (USX-2011, IX-2012 & 2013). This fall he will study global affairs at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, where he will participate in college forensics. Nathan agreed to sit down with Extemp Central for a two part interview to share his thoughts on extemporaneous speaking, reflect on his career, and provide advice to future extemporaneous speakers.
So, how did you end up doing extemporaneous speaking?
I actually started my forensics career in Policy Debate and HI. I did Extemp for maybe 6 rounds my whole freshman year, mostly because Strong (my coach) made me. I was terrible. Then, at the end of the year, I decided that Policy just wasn’t my thing. We had a pretty strong extemp program that year, with upper-classmen like Mirza Germovic, Amelia Martin, and Catherine Chiodo, and they encouraged me to go to GMIF. After that, I pretty much stayed in extemp, while also doing events like PF Debate, Oratory, Impromptu, HI, and Congress.
We are going to interview your coach Harry Strong to discuss this more in-depth, but what was your normal practice routine like?
Strong and I always liked to change it up. It might be anywhere from a regular prep and speech followed by a debrief, or drills like yelling out random nouns and making us change our speech on the fly to address those topics, or having us hold cans of green beans to work on the angles of our gestures. There really wasn’t a routine per se, we just set goals for what I needed to improve on and designed practices to address those issues
When did you realize that you found your niche in extemporaneous speaking?
My sophomore year at the Patriot Games, I quarterfinaled, which was my first experience in a national-circuit outround. I pulled a question on Afghanistan’s infrastructure or something, and I was terrible. I was so nervous that the speech was unintelligible. So I walked out of that round and I realized “Oh. That’s how you don’t do extemp.” And things were uphill from there.
What are some common mistakes that you often see novice or less polished competitors make in extemporaneous speaking?
One of the worst things novices can do in speeches is to use first person pronouns like “I” or “we”. The reason is that it reminds the judge that they aren’t listening to an expert, they’re listening to a high school freshman who probably just heard about this country 30 minutes ago. Never refer to yourself in extemp. The second big issue is analytical. There’s always a transitional period for extempers where they read some book by some expert who purports to explain the entire world in 200 pages, and extempers take those experts as gospel because they haven’t read that much else.
If you could fix one thing in extemporaneous speaking, whether it be the structure of the event or something people do a lot, what would it be and why?
There are two things, really. The first is that the community needs to change the paradigm that competitors speak and then leave. Kids need to not be afraid that the judges will drop them if they stay and watch after they’re done. I learned more about my style of extemp from watching other competitors than I did from practicing on my own. The second and larger issue is canning. Writing generic introductions and jokes and applying them to every intro has always been around, but that doesn’t make it right. First of all, what happened in a Greek myth, or telling a cheap joke where you can Mad-Lib in whichever politicians you want, by definition will not link to the question. In that way, you’re wasting the audience’s time because you aren’t framing the speech – which therefore means you aren’t answering the question. Second, and more importantly, it’s unethical. Extemporaneous Speaking is meant to be Extemporaneous. If you’re prepping the first 30 seconds of a speech before you know what the topic is, you may not be breaking any rules, but you’re violating the premise of the activity.
6. What is a round or tournament experience that you will remember several years from now?
IX Finals of NFLs this year is an obvious one. It was an honor to perform on that stage, and more importantly, I had a ton of fun with that speech. I think another one is Glenbrooks finals this year. That’s when I realized that my best method of reaching people was to combine off-the-wall humor with lots of enthusiasm about obscure, specific, well-researched arguments, which became what I worked toward all this year.