Speech Competition Part 4

I promise, this is the last part. And yes, I know that the competition was six days ago.

Awards assembly. Hour long. Dragging on...so many trophies...some very strange ones...
The team did okay. The kids in the champs division -- people who had already qualified for regionals -- did better than the kids in the qualifying division.
And there was one duet who everyone (almost everyone at the whole competition who had seen their piece, not just people from my school) thought would get second. And then it didn't place in the top three. Those two were so disappointed.
Anyway, whenever someone from my school placed, we all stood up and clapped. When it was someone from a different school, we just clapped.
When someone from the fairly new school in our district won, we stood up and clapped, and they did the same for us.

And then we all got on the bus. And went back to the school.
Some people were going to Chili's and then the house of the president of the Speech and Debate club. I chose not to go.

And that was my first ever high school speech tournament.
I'm going to get to do it all again on February 28th...I hope it goes better. I mean, even if I don't do any better, I'll be less clueless. And I will know to plan ahead on what I'm going to watch, and to try to make it to places early...
I did learn some things. So the 28th will be my chance to apply them. But I must admit that there's a part of me that wants to qualify for regionals. But I won't be too disappointed if I don't, because it would be a bit unreasonable to be disappointed.

But wait! There's more. Post tournament stuff, stuff from Monday.
First of all, I got my ballots back. Ballots -- the sheets the judges have. There was one judge in the prelim room, and three in the semi final room.
So!

Ballot #1: Prelim ballot. He said he loved my selection, that folktales rocked. (Okay, okay, he didn't exactly say that. But he approved of my piece selection.) He liked how I waited for him before I began, and he liked my volume. He said that I could have emphasized the accents more, and that would have made it better. But he gave me first in the room!

Ballot #2: Semifinal ballot, the first one I read. Since I don't know if this judge was male or female, I will call this person a she. She liked my selection and my volume, but also said I could have done better on the accent. Also said the memorization was impressive but that made the script be distracting -- since I didn't look at it. She placed me 3rd in the room.

Ballot #3: Semifinal ballot. I have no idea on the gender of this judge, either. So I shall call said person a she, also. She gave me 5th place in the room, liked my selection, said I needed the accent (that has been added, just so you know), and probably said something else; I don't remember.

Ballot #4: Semifinal ballot. I'm calling this judge a he. Because there was one male judge in there. So I have to make someone a he. Anyone, he didn't like it. Period. Gave me sixth place in the room, didn't mention a single thing I did well. The ballot said that I looked stressed and my stance was tight, I needed an accent and more differentiation in the voices, I needed to slow down, and...
Well, was there anything else?
I don't remember. But none of it was good. Ballot #4 really annoyed me. I certainly believe that I did a lot of stuff that I could have done better. I don't mind the criticism. But it would be nice if this person who has so many suggestions for making the piece better could also tell me what doesn't need changing.

Second, the NFL points.
NFL = National Forensics League. By going to speech competitions, one gathers points.
I got 5 points for getting first place in my prelim room, and I got 2 points for how I did in semis, since 3+5+6 = 14. 14/3 = 4 plus some. But the plus some doesn't matter, just the 4, and like I said, I got 2 points for that.