Better By Nightfall

You know it's a good weekend when you get trashed after the tournament is over and find yourself throwing up in the bus porto-potty the next morning on the way home. Of course, I wouldn't know the full extent of that experience because I wasn't the one barfing my guts out after drinking "2 Margaritas, 2 Coronas, 1 Chimichanga, and 'Soupy' Tequila." Annah, however, was certainly seeing bottom-side on the bus ride home. Now, don't go feeling sorry for her. She drank her heart out and then tried to make everyone else feel sorry for her self-created misfortune. Tragic, I think not.

Besides Annah's barf-fest 2004, the weekend went well. I placed 3rd of 36 in my Informative Speech, 5th of 12 in my Dramatic Interp., and my debate partner Hillary and I broke to Octa-Finals. Overall, our team took second place in Division I behind Carroll. Carroll brought 32 competitors with 77 speech entries, but only broke 42% of them compared to our team who only brought 13 competitors with 47 speech entries and broke in 58% of them. When you break it down in numbers, we did much better than them...and we didn't have to flood the tournament with out speech entries to do it. Still, we increased our lead over Carroll for the NFC by 120 points...a tough lead for the Satanic Saints to break.

Again, all in all it was a good tournament except for the following notations:

Carroll clearly flooded the tournament in an attempt to gain a lead over our college, but didn't manage to. While I think it's somewhat unfair that they brought double the competitors we brought, I can deal with it. However, judging from some of my ballots and the ballots of other members on my team, I think Carroll had some masked malicious intent against my college. Both of the speech events I broke in had the same Carroll judge (among the three judges). And in both of those rounds she dropped my college in placings and points for various dumb citations like:
1. You don't have enough sources in this speech (when I have 8 fully cited sources)
2. You're speech is well done, but you don't walk me through the visual aides you have (When I know I did because the other judges complemented me for it).
3. One caveat, I have heard this piece done so many times and because of it I have to compare you to the rest of them, and you don't do it well enough. So she gave me a 5 and 19 in the round (that's really low).

So, on point three there I'd just like to point out that everyone that broke to finals in DI, with the exception of two people, had pieces that were overdone within the last semester or year. However, I guarantee you that this "unbiased" judge who shall remained unnamed didn't site on their ballots because: One, they were all about man-bashing; Two, they weren't from my college; Three, they didn't stand in the way of her college's attempt to win the the tournament and try and fill the gap; and finally, while she knew they were overdone, she sited my piece in particular because she knew it was her only real scapegoat should the ballot ever have been challenged.

So, not only did she gype me from placing higher, but she also did it in such a way that she wouldn't get called on about it. Which, of course, really angers me. It's one thing to flood the competition in an attempt to win because you're that desperate, but it's another when you have your college's judges purposely lower ranks of the school you're college is in direct contention with. That's not only unfair, it shows just how low you're college really is and how desperate it was to win and have a smaller gap between us for overall sweeps.

Well, I'd just like you to know that I'll be around at the next NFC tournament with all my events that placed, with new speeches that will place, and with a team that will solidify the fact that we own the overall sweeps regardless of your bias and desperation.

Good luck, you're going to need it.