Your worst round EVER?

[missameliax]

Well, thinking back to this year of speech I began thinking; What is my worst round this year? It was fairly easy for me to think of because it happend just last night at State Qualifiers. After semis and right before finals I was walking down the stairs to head to the commons area at the school we were at, and I rolled my ankle and fell down the stairs. I ruined my heels and I twisted my ankle, but on top of all that; I finaled. I was fighting back tears the entire time (which is horrible in HI xD) because I was in so much pain and my pops were horrible. I missed state by 2 spots all because of my stupid fall (I know I would have done WAY better if it had not been for my fall.)

So FOLers, what is YOUR worst round?

[Zayzay]

My worst round had to be my freshman yr, I was at state for poetry interp and was the only freshman there. I was in prelims and was sixth speaker, everyone before me was amazing. Thinking, I had to out do them I tried to be bigger in my performance and began to shake. This unsincerity made me miss finals by one person taking fourth in the room.

[This Is Awkward]

DI.
I was at a local tournament, and though it was pretty late in the season, I had picked up my DI really late. After getting up the day before super early to get ready for congress (saving grace) and spending the whole Friday at the tournament for Congress and LD, I go home late, practice, get three hours of sleep, and come back the next day. After prelims of DI and HI and a bad LD outround, I come back to my team to hear that, from what they heard from judges and other competitors, I would not break in either HI or DI. My first reaction is 'MY HUMOR! NOOOOO!!!!'. My second reaction is 'Hey, now I can eat all that chocolate I've been avoiding for a week to prepare for this tournament which clearly helped me zero percent'. So I do. I eat dairy, chocolate, all of the Forensics Don't foods.
And that's when I found out that yes, I actually did in fact break. But not with my beloved HI. With the DI I had put together very shortly before and still lacked a memorized intro.
So, with no sleep, despondent about my HI, my vocal cords defiled, I trudge to my round and give the worst EXPLETIVE performance of that EXPLETIVE DI I have EVER given in my entire life. Sometimes you can ad-lib pieces, right?
Well, sometimes you can't.
Everybody has a bad round once and a while. Some of us just have them more than others.:p

[Crazy50128]

It was an improv round, like my 3rd tournament ever. I'm DE'd, with duo first. We do horrible in duo and mess up lines, then proceed to go to our next event. I then walk in to my improv round and see a few kids I have previously hit that I have beaten before, so I got excited. The judge calls me up, and I pick 3 deathly topics. All of them are extremely hard, but I take one, and go 4/3 with it. I go up with barely any plotline, and go. Of course, my judge was sitting on the side, so I never saw any time signals. I go 8:10 with a horrible performance. As I sit down, I spill a whole bottle of water onto my suit. I got the 5.

[MissInterpretation14]

Possibly my worst round this year was State Finals in Duo. My partner and I were SO excited to break! We went to our round energized and excited.

When we got there, however, the audience was large but completely unresponsive. Things that usually got a reaction got just deadpan epxressions. My partner and I had to play romantically interested characters at one point, and he's shorter than me (yeah, I know, but what could we do?). No one had ever had a problem with this, but some people in the front row started laughing when we came to our dance scene, where the height difference was the most obvious.

Then we made a mistake that we had never, ever, ever made before with blocking and lines. My partner started saying my lines and we missed a part of blocking. After that I was so nervous and unbelievably frustrated. We hadn't planned on competing at Districts so this was our only chance to qualify for a national tournament (NIETOC by getting top 3). The funny thing is we'd made worse mistakes in the past, but I think the nerves, sleep deprivation, and lack of audience response just got to us.

For the first time ever, we got a remark about our height on a ballot "Bad casting - men taller, women shorter." It was the only time we'd ever been ranked last place.

We got 4th, barely mising qualifying for NIETOC. It was inexplicably frustrating.

[JjulianSr]

1989 CHSSA State, Original Advocacy (Oratory with a purpose, we called it back then), Round 3.

I took a 4 in round 1 (I never should have bought that pink shirt). I had a 2 in round 2. The traditional break was a 7. So round 3 had to be a 1. My coach told me this before I went to round 3.

The tournament was in Los Angeles. The second prelim day was May 5 (Cinco de Mayo for those not versed in Mexican holidays). I had drawn position 3 in a 7 speaker panel - not optimal. On top of that, it was summer in SoCal. Hot. The competition room was stifling, so someone opened a window... which just happened to face the quad where the students at LA City College were gathering for the Fiesta. Immediately outside the window... the stage for the festival. I stepped up for my turn, opened my mouth, inhaled, and as if on cue a Mariachi band started playing it's warm-up set on the stage not 15 feet from my room. It played for precisely 10 minutes, then took a break. How do I know this? Because my speech was 10 minutes long exactly. The last note accompanied my "Thank you" after the conclusion. No other speaker had to shout over the band. There is no way anyone in that room heard me. Or so I thought.

Went 1-1-2 from 3 judges. :)

Worst round. Best outcome. Sometimes how we deal with adversity means more than how we handle the easy tasks.

[Crimson]

It was my freshman year (so like a few months ago) and I was trying out a new serious prose piece. I absolutley hated my current one so I got the smart idea that I will do a piece that I have never practiced before and that it was going to be wrong. I was put into rooms with the best interpers in our state and my first time in round on was 3:43. I never looked to see where I placed.

[cow]

my worst round was good, but it made me feel bad. the judge started to use his phone in the middle of my performance. i got a 3.

[ianmcentee0112]

My worst round:

It was a 2nd round prelims in DI. My piece was "The Night Larry Kramer Kissed Me" and towards the middle of it I had to get really angry. Well my judge was sitting in front of me timing on her phone. When I got angry, it startled her causing to throw her phone across the room. She simply said to not stop and then proceeded to crawl along the floor trying to find her phone. All the time, I'm still doing my piece. When she finally did find her phone she screamed in joy ruining a touching moment in my piece. On my critique sheet she said nothing about her interrupting it and gave me 5...I missed breaking by one because of the 5.