Hi Jason,
Thank you for your purchase.

Please provide me a temporary WP-admin login for your site where this happens, so we could log in and take a look ‘from the inside’ as that’s the most efficient way to see and resolve the issue. We do not interfere with any data or anything else except for the plugin (in case that’s a production version of the site), and of course we do not provide login data to third party. You can write credentials here just check Private Reply so nobody can see them except us.

Hi Jason,

Best way to prevent this issue is to create MySQL VIEW from your query and use that for input.
We use both "AND" and "OR" based on filter type that are used for column search for server side tables and if you want to use any of them in your query best way is with VIEW to prevent unexpected search results.

For sorting I just enabled in Additional settings, Enable sorting option. 
Take a look at wpDataTables support page that I created and take a look at query.
Hope this helps.

Hi Jason,

We are glad that you find the solution using VIEW, good job.
I can see that the table is working fine and the query that you write is good.
If you have any issues feel free to open a new ticket.

Hi Jason,

On this link http://www.mattalkonline.com/2016-17-division-i-dual-meet-scores/ the table ID is 17 not 19.
I enabled sorting for that table and change the comp_date Column type to date.(See the attachment) 
Please take a look and let me know if something is wrong.

Hi Jason,

I will do my best to try to help you.
Can you please send me some screenshots of how do you want to table look like.
You can draw it if it is easier for you so I can take a look.