“Great moments are born from great opportunity, and that’s what you have here tonight, boys. That’s what you’ve earned here tonight. One game. If we played them ten times they might win nine. But not this game.” Part of the speech the once great hockey coach, Herb Brooks, gave in the locker room just moments before one of the most significant events in American sports history. The Soviets were unbeatable for the most part of twenty years. They were supposed to win gold at those Winter Olympics in Lake Placid. But on February 22, 1980, on that cold winter day in upstate New York, the United States said otherwise.
Nothing can compare to the emotion that went into this game. The Soviets were back as the terror of the world after invading Afghanistan just two months before the games, another cold war was about to begin, not to mention the overwhelming fact that the Soviet hockey team was unbeatable. US confidence was shot and fear had reemerged in Americans. The game that is referred to as, “the miracle on ice,” wasn’t just a hockey game: it was a battle that changed the US. But how were kids going to win? Well, that’s what makes the victory all the more beautiful: the impossible was accomplished. A true underdog story. One can imagine how loud America was on that late February day.
This was a really good elevator pitch which was loaded with pathos. This was an effective strategy as your civic artifact, the speech, also relies heavily on pathos.