Jericho Lopez stood up to give his speech and his nose started bleeding. The McKinley student wasn't used to the dry air of Henderson, Nev., where the national championships of high school speech were held last month.

Lopez wiped his nose and went on.

He placed seventh in Humorous Interpretation out of 230 of the best and funniest high school students in that category. His teacher John Newkirk says it is the first time in his 16 years of teaching that a public school student from Hawai'i has placed that high in the event.

Pretty good for a kid who didn't make it through his first practice.

"I couldn't do it," Lopez said. "I quit. I bailed."

That was when he was a sophomore. But at the end of that year, Newkirk staged a showcase of the speech team's best performances. Lopez sat in the audience and thought to himself, "Aw, I want to do that!"

So the next year, he tried again. And by the end of his junior year, Lopez had won first place in the state in his event and was off to represent Hawai'i in the National Forensic League Championships.

"He quit, but then he came back," Newkirk said. "He didn't allow fear to stop him from doing what he wanted to do."

For his first trip to the national tournament, Lopez worked on an interpretation of the Tom Hanks' film "Cast Away" for his presentation — a huge risk for a public speaking competition since it involves very little speaking.

"He talked to Wilson. He played the whale," Newkirk remembers fondly. "It was original but it didn't get very far in the competition."

This year, he did an interpretation of "Gremlins." Lopez played six characters, changing from one to the next as fast as cuts in a video. It is an amazing sport to watch when done well, and Lopez is brilliant.

Newkirk knows about turning around a shaky start. When he started at McKinley, he was asked to revive the fading speech program, something he knew nothing about.

"When I first started, I didn't coach the kids. I just gave them rides to the speech tournaments," he said.

Then, there was an award assembly for all the schools participating in high school speech and McKinley didn't get called up once. That formed Newkirk's resolve. He was going to figure it out. McKinley was going to get awards.

"Doing speech made me feel like a teacher," Newkirk said. "You teach a freshman English class and you see the students for an hour a day. But in speech, you meet them as a freshman or sophomore and you spend so much time with them and you see them grow."

Lopez will enter Brigham Young University-Utah in the fall. After that, his plans are, "Get married, have kids, make them do speech."

It builds character.

Lee Cataluna's column runs Tuesdays, Fridays and Sundays. Reach her at 535-8172 or lcataluna@honoluluadvertiser.com.

Lee Cataluna's column runs Tuesdays, Fridays and Sundays. Reach her at 535-8172 or lcataluna@honoluluadvertiser.com.