I went to the North 42 Area Contest tonight, which includes the North Suburban club, serving as Chief Judge.  Interestingly enough the Northwest 4 Area Contest, which includes the Arlington Heights club, was also held tonight, but I went to North 42 as the Area Governor also belongs to North Suburban and I wanted to help her out with anything she’s involved with that job.

Prior to the contest starting, the Area Governor/Contest Chair told me that she planned to announce only the winner and not the 2nd place for the Humorous Speech Contest as there were only 3 contestants and felt announcing the 2nd place would reveal the 3rd (last) place contestant and would make that person look bad.  I told her I disagree with that as I think it is more important for the audience to find out who the 2nd place contestant is in case the winner was unable to compete in the Division Contest.

She mentioned that a prominent District 30 Toastmaster influenced her decision – I blurted out the name of a past District 30 Governor, who actually prevented me from announcing 2nd place at the 2002 Southwest Division Humorous Speech Contest when I was their Division Governor and there were only three contestants (there were 4 Areas and both the winner and runner-up from one Area Contest were not available to compete).  At that contest, the PDG was one of the ballot counters and held the 2nd place certificate to prevent the Chief Judge from giving me that.  I insisted on getting the certificate but was rebuked, unfortunately I did not want to waste time in a confrontation so I went with announcing just the winner, while handing over the 2nd place certificate and trophy to the runner-up after the contest.  Understandably, the runner-up (who was last year’s District 30 Governor) was disappointed with that and even contacted the PDG to express her displeasure about not getting recognized for her 2nd place finish.  The District 30 Governor at that time also mentioned his disapproval for my announcing just the winner with only three contestants.

While I did not want to push the North 42 Contest Chair to announce the runner-up for the Humorous Speech Contest, as she’s the Contest Chair and would rather see her learn from her doings, I still think that the Contest Chair should announce the runner-up if there were 3 contestants in a contest – in fact if you check this year’s contest rulebook, page 24 in the Humorous Speech section mentions the following regarding winners:

In contests with five or more participants, a third place winner (if wanted), a second place winner, and a first place winner will be announced.  In contests with four or fewer participants, a second place and first place winner will be announced.

In addition to the audience need to know the runner-up in case the winner is unable to compete at the next level, the Contest Chair should take announcing the runner-up as an opportunity to give more recognition to the contestant that, for most cases, did a great job with the speech but just got beaten out by someone who was better at the contest.

If the Contest Chair is worried that the third (last) place contestant would not take the results well, the Chair should realize that the contestant did make the leap in competing in a contest, something that many Toastmasters don’t have the courage to do, therefore the contestant was already a winner by trying.  Besides if that person did not take the last place well, chances are that person is someone that can’t handle defeat and would still be bent out of shape if it was a second place finish in a contest with many participants – there was one past prominent member of the Arlington Heights club that was like that and at times persist with his whining despite the rest of the club who did attend his contests believing that the winner was deserving.