Last Debate Tournament

I had a speech and debate tournament from 1-15 to 1-16. Oddly enough, it says this was published 1-17, even though I finished it 2-2. Go figure.

First, I will start at the speech segment. It was on Friday, and ran from 1:00 to 8:00, located at the Northwest Nazarene University. There were three rounds total and no finals. I was entered in Expository speaking, and my topic was how doodling is a high art. It wasn't especially eventful, as there was a glitch in the arrangement system so that everyone would be in the same rounds with each other. I might also add that everyone in expos was from the same school but me. That fact aside, I went against the same people 3 times. Out of a group of 4, 2 dropped, so it was just me and one other person the whole time. My doodling speech was apparently very good, as I went 3-0, as while my opponent was the same, the judge wasn't. Despite my perfect streak, I took second in novice expos, as there were a total of 2 different groups that went against each other every time, and the winner from the other group had more points than me (besides placing in a round, you also receive points based on performance). The winner's a good speaker, (I've gone against him before), but his topic isn't the most interesting, namely chelonians (turtles, tortoises, etc.), and no matter how good a speaker is, the topic still needs to be interesting.

The debate segment was more interesting, as always. I went 4-2 (I haven't actually received any ballots), and was in the top 30% in Novice LD I believe. I will mention now that the cause of the following rant is for the purpose of that the people I am ranting about placed MUCH higher than me, and it is somewhat nice to rant to someone besides your inner voice.

Resolved: Economic sanctions ought not be used to achieve foreign policy objectives.
The first loss is a judge's fault, as I am quite sure they were a policy judge. A policy judge is mostly focused on evidence, as policy debaters are the people who lug around tubs of evidence. I need to mention that LD is an opinion debate and the amount of evidence is insignificant, as most cases have the evidence but have the actual conclusions of the case made by your own interpretation of the information. I hope you see why policy judges and LD don't mix. Anyway, my opponent won simply because they had a ton of statistics (probably fake, but evidence isn't the main point in LD), and they spent most of their first speech on it. I spent my time on arguments (I completely deconstructed their argument, one of the key components was completely irrelevant). So, I lost.
The other person probably just sounded a lot more professional or something, because he won the tournament even though I've scoured my notes for a good reason for my loss. Honestly, his case didn't make sense. To name a few, they said that the UN opposes sanctions (besides the approx. 70% they impose) and that sanctions were as dangerous as WMDs. Completely ridiculous. Nukes can destroy the world in 20 minutes, sanctions, not at all.

Well, I have reached the end of my rant. I have a winning record of 11-8 (debate), and I'm doing well in speech, so I am content. I actually started the 2 days after the tournament, and it took me this long to finish it. Quite a bit of time, in my opinion.