Ms. LaBove’s first public speaking experience was at the age of four, when she was valedictorian and delivered an address to her fellow kindergartners. “Most kids would have spoken softly but not me,” she says. “I thought that everyone being quiet and having to listen to what I had to say was the greatest thing ever, and I was hooked on performance.”
She continued to debate from junior high, when she could barely see over the podium, until college, competing for the University of St. Thomas and the University of Houston. After obtaining a Masters in Speech from West Texas A&M University and a Juris Doctorate degree from Georgia State University College of Law, she went on to coach at the University of Houston, West Texas A&M University, and Central Texas College. She also served as instructor of speech communication at Morehouse College. LaBove is a member of the Phi Rho Pi American Forensics Association and is an American Forensics Association nationally ranked public speaker.
“I tell my team constantly that they have an obligation to be themselves and fulfill their own potential. As long as you are true to yourself, your team and your school you will be just fine,” said LaBove. “I think that it is not the pressure to duplicate the success of anyone else that drives me as a coach, but it is the urge to continue a legacy and win that makes us do what we do. We cannot predict the future or relive the past, but we can do whatever it takes to make ourselves the best that we can be in the present.”
