Rising Stars on the Track and a Racing Hero in the Classroom

As the Travers showcased rising champions, Saratoga enters the transitional phrase of ending the racing season with some people heading back to the classroom

This year’s 155th running of the Travers Stakes at Saratoga Race Course provided another exciting finish with 2-year-old champion Fierceness holding off a determined run from 3-year-old filly divisional leader Thorpedo Anna.

The Travers is somewhat of the transitional point for the Saratoga meet, especially going into the last week and Labor Day weekend, for horses, those involved in the industry, and even seasonal and retired employees around the track.

While Fierceness and Thorpedo Anna, as well as Sierra Leone, Dornoch, and perhaps a couple of the other finishers coming out of the race, transition into the fall by preparing the Breeders’ Cup in November at Del Mar, many people in the Saratoga Springs region are also getting ready for the upcoming school year, whether it is being a student or a teacher.

One of those people is legendary track announcer, broadcaster, and speaker Tom Durkin, who is teaching public speaking at Saratoga Catholic High School starting in September.

This is not the first time that Durkin has taught a public speaking course. Shortly after retiring with a 24-year career as the track announcer for the New York Racing Association in 2014, he taught a public speaking class for the Saratoga Springs High School Continuing Education program.

“This is something that I always that I always wanted to do,” he said. “I did one for adults in the continuing education, and I liked that. I really wanted to teach high school-aged kids about public speaking.”

Durkin approached Saratoga Catholic principal and alumni Chris Signor about teaching the class. While Durkin’s approach and idea came as a surprise for Signor, he is excited about this learning opportunity for the students, which is a joint project in both the English and Business Departments.

“This came out of the blue. I never planned this in my wildest dreams,” Signor said. “He has some great ideas about teaching a course that he wanted to expand upon when he taught it as an adult continuing education class. This is going to be a popular course with the kids. This has been very well received.”

Durkin’s interest in public speaking started in a class at a catholic high school in Chicago where he grew up. Not only did Durkin only enjoy the small-sized class, he also found it beneficial as those skills became the foundation to his race calling for NYRA and the Breeders’ Cup, his sportscasting for NBC and ESPN, and speaking engagements that include the National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame Inductions.

While race calling, broadcasting, and being an emcee for the Hall of Fame inductions reflect an aspect of entertainment in public speaking, Durkin believes that rhetoric and discourse are important to both persuasion and analysis.

“There are all different kinds of discourse,” he said. “Rhetoric is the art or science on convincing someone to your point of view by the means of speech. If you want to ask your parents to borrow the car, you can use a lot of rhetorical skills to try to persuade them.”

By taking a student-centered approach to his teaching, one of Durkin’s objectives is providing students the skills and experience they need, which includes writing speeches, appearance, and body language, so they can deliver an effective speech.

“I will give them many of the tools,” he said. “The primary objective will be having the students get in front of other people and speak at least once every class. It’s just getting that experience of getting in front of people and communicate to them. It’s important for them to sound good. If you don’t sound good, it’s much harder to keep the audience’s attention.”

Durkin’s lesson plans also include teaching students about when to memorize speeches, how to use adrenaline to their benefit, and how to overcome perhaps the common challenge many public speakers – fear.

“It’s the No. 1 phobia in America,” Durkin said about fear. “People are more afraid of public speaking than they are afraid of dying. If there is any of that, we are going to deal with that off the bat. If you make a mistake, so what? The ceiling didn’t fall. You didn’t get struck by lightning.”

As part of the lesson, Durkin plans to emphasize that one of the ways for students to overcome the paralysis of fear and being confident is preparation.

“If you are over-the-top totally prepared, you are going to have a good experience because you will be confident,” he said. “If you are not prepared, all you will be thinking about is the mistakes that you are going to make.”

Durkin plans to share plenty of personal examples for being prepared, as well as other concepts covered in this class. Some of these include his retirement speech in the Saratoga Winner’s Circle, his speech for receiving the Eclipse Award for Merit, and his mother’s eulogy – all of which required a thorough revision process.

 “The key to writing a good speech is rewrite and brevity,” he said. “Part of rewriting is editing out extraneous stuff, but adding stuff by using various rhetorical tropes to make it a good speech.”

While Durkin plans to cover the objectives for the course, he would also like to work with students on cultivating their creativity over the academic year.

“I really like to take somebody who was intrepid on public speaking. I want to foster creativity.” he said. “This course is going to teach creativity and conviction. I will point them in certain directions on how they can do that and how to convince people. There are several ways to do it: pathos, ethos, and logos.”

With a student-centered classroom, teaching can be a two-way street as the students gain knowledge and skills from the teacher, and the teacher learns from them as well. Durkin indicated that he wants to learn something from the students.

“I would like to have an ability to connect to younger people,” he said. “There is a lot of stuff that they do, which I don’t understand. I’m sure there is a lot of stuff that I do that they don’t understand. It’s just being around young people and open up my understanding about the real person behind the teenager.”

If the class goes well and he learns something from the students, Durkin said he would “absolutely” come back to do it again next year.