Event: Storytelling · Entry: Sam Bloch
Michigan
Speech
Fourteen years in Michigan’s speech and debate community — as a competitor, a coach, a founder, and, most Saturdays that matter, the guy in the tab room. Storytelling was my event. So here’s the story, told in four chapters.
At a glance
- What
- Fourteen years in Michigan's speech and debate community
- Competitor
- 2× MIFA state champion in Storytelling
- Coach
- 10+ state finalists, two champions, a national champion
- Founder
- The Spartanvitational — the largest tournament in the state
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MIFA state champion, Storytelling
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State finalists coached
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Competitors hosted in one day
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Years in the community
Chapter I · The Competitor
I learned early that a story can win a room.
I grew up in this activity. Storytelling was my event — stand alone in front of a judge with nothing but a folktale and your own nerve — and through the Michigan Interscholastic Forensic Association I became a two-time state champion, a four-time state finalist, and, for a while, a record-holder. At the MSCI tournament on Mackinac Island I won the championship three times in four years.
None of it happens without my coach, Doug “Bev” Bevier — the first person who made me believe a story could win a room, and the reason I’ve spent every year since trying to pay that belief forward.
Chapter II · The Coach
Then I found out the wins mean more from the judge’s table.
Through college and into my early career I coached forensics at Okemos and at my alma mater, Walled Lake Western — four and a half years of Tuesday-night practices, weekend tournaments, and helping teenagers find pieces of literature that fit voices they didn’t know they had yet.
My students went further than I did: ten-plus state finalists, two state champions, and a national champion. Coaching taught me the thing that every job since has confirmed — building the person who performs beats performing, every time.
Chapter III · The Founder
It started as a lunch conversation at Michigan State.
After I aged out of competing, I missed the activity enough to do something unreasonable about it. Over lunch with a friend, it clicked: MSU had everything a high school tournament needs — space, students, energy. What it didn’t have was anyone willing to organize it.
The road was genuinely intimidating. I’d need to convince enough Spartans to charter a registered student organization (Spartan Speech), secure a performance hall plus fifty classrooms for a Saturday, and persuade high school coaches across the state to trust a brand-new tournament with their kids. Then we did it — and a university grant covered the whole thing: the largest building on campus, awards for the champions, and lunch for every coach and judge who gives their weekends to this activity.
March 23, 2018 · East Lansing, MI
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High school students
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Schools
one dot ≈ ten students
The first Spartanvitational. A lunch-table idea, ten months later: a registered club, a university grant, fifty classrooms, and nearly 250 high schoolers on campus.
By 2020 the club was 50+ members strong, recognized by student government, and running the largest competitive public speaking competition in Michigan. When COVID took away the building, we ran a national tournament online instead. And when I graduated, I did the hardest, best thing you can do with something you built: I handed it to the next generation of Spartans.
The Spartanvitational turns ten in 2027. It doesn’t need me anymore. That’s the whole point.
Chapter IV · The Steward
These days I give back from the tab room.
Every May I’m back on Mackinac Island with Michigan Speech Coaches Inc. — eleven conferences and counting. I spend the Saturday in the tabulation room keeping the tournament running, volunteer-coach my alma mater when they’ll have me, and eat my body weight in fudge, which I consider a membership obligation.
Lately, stewardship has started to look like my day job: at the most recent conference I gave a professional development talk at the Grand Hotel on what AI can quietly take off a coach’s plate — building live on stage to show how approachable it’s become. Not to hand anyone a finished product, but to put real capability in the hands of people who’d never call themselves technical. The kid this community built grew up and came back with tools.
The Last Round
Everything I do professionally, I did here first.
Standing up in front of strangers and holding the room. Coaching someone to a result you’ll never get credit for. Founding an organization out of nothing but a lunch conversation and stubbornness. Running an 800-person operation out of a tab room. Teaching people that the intimidating tool is actually within their reach.
I’ve been rehearsing my entire career since I was fourteen. This community was the stage.
On Stage
- Public Speaking
- Storytelling
- Performance Coaching
- Judging & Tabulation
- Mentorship
- Teaching
Behind the Curtain
- Founding Organizations
- Event Operations
- Grant Funding
- Volunteer Leadership
- Community Stewardship
- Succession Planning
Got a room that needs winning?
I’m always up for talking speech, coaching, community-building — or why Storytelling is objectively the best event. Fudge opinions also welcome.
Michigan Speech · MIFA · MSCI · 14 years and counting