The meeting was opened by the past President, Howard Herbert in place of the President, Niki Boersma who was unable to attend. The Chairman for the evening was Peter Wilson who ensured that the judge, the candidates and the members of the audience were all familiar with the rules of the Evaluation Competition.
The winner of the previous Evaluation competition, Chris Clissitt was unable to enter as the rules disallowed national finalists from taking part in the competition in the following year. Chris spoke on the subject of Strivers which was unusual yet demonstrated his ability particularly in the use of alliteration, word pictures and gestures. The candidates had to evaluate the speaker on his use of voice.
The rules were strictly adhered to both from the point of view of the timing and the presentation of the evaluations by the candidates. The judge, past National President of the Association of Speakers’ Clubs, Sandra Barton, gave a full and encouraging appraisal of each of the candidates before declaring that the two people chosen to go forward to the Area Competition in York on 13th January 2013 were Neil Wilson and Howard Herbert.
A Topics Session followed led by Howard Herbert and evaluated by Peter Ryans. Peter Wilson then thanked Sandra Barton for being the judge and Howard Herbert closed the meeting encouraging members of the Wetherby Club to attend the Area Contest to support all the entrants from Wetherby.