The date is May 27. The city is Toronto. The Bellerose Reach for the Top team is one game away from the national finals, and is up against Toronto’s titanic P.A.C.E. Academy for Gifted Children.
It’s sudden-death overtime, and it all comes down to one question: which trading company effectively ruled British India?
Bellerose quizmaster Mitchell Sorensen jams the buzzer button. “The East India Company,” he says.
He’s right.
The crowd goes wild. “Everyone jumped up,” says teammate Susan Muncner. A photo taken milliseconds later shows her whooping it up, arms in the air, as Sorensen tumbles from his chair in excitement.
Bellerose Composite took silver at the 2013 national Reach for the Top tournament, which ran from May 24 to 27. The annual event is a quiz-show-like challenge that has high-school students answer as many trivia questions correctly as they can as fast as possible.
It’s a true Cinderella story, says team coach Brian Grant, as they weren’t even supposed to be at nationals.
The team had placed third at provincials, said team coach Brian Grant, behind two squads from Edmonton’s Old Scona, and only the top two teams could go. “We should not have been going to nationals.”
But due to an unwritten rule in Ontario, one that said that each school should have only one team that goes to nationals, Bellerose got to go anyway. (Both Scona teams went as well, resulting in an unusual three-team presence from Alberta.)
And the team was looking for redemption, says Muncner, who, like Sorensen, Cole Forester, Evan Grohn and William Mazurek, had reached nationals last year with Bellerose, only to place eighth. “We knew we had to beat Old Scona while we were there, which we did, and redeem ourselves after that embarrassment at provincials where we lost by 10 points (one question) to them.”
But they were also up against elite private schools from Ontario. “None of us ever expected to get second,” Muncner says, “or to even have a chance at first.”
Mazurek credits the squad’s teamwork and experience for its performance at nationals. “That’s 100 per cent why we did so well – not that we were the best players there, because we weren’t at all, but I think we played best as a team.”
Their semi-final match against the Academy took an hour and a half – about three times as long as a typical Reach game – with the two teams neck-and-neck for most of it. Tied at 310-310, the judges called for sudden death overtime.
Everyone was on edge, said team rookie Liam McCoy, wondering if the underdog Alberta team would come out ahead. “I thought my heart was going to explode.”
The team played the game of their lives that round, Sorensen says, winning 320-310. “That’s one of the greatest Reach games I’ve ever been involved in.”
They had just 10 minutes afterwards to get ready for the final against the defending champions, the University of Toronto Schools (UTS), Grohn says. “We didn’t even have time to get more coffee.”
They lost 540-190.
UTS is a strong squad, says team rookie Jakob Brinkhof, and there’s no shame in losing to them. “We were the more attractive team,” he quips.
This win shows that you can win big and get glory on a high school team even if you’re more bookish than athletic, Muncner says. “It’s okay to be a nerd.”
Besides the memories and the camaraderie, the Bellerose Reach members say they’ve picked up valuable skills from their time with the team. “Reach forces you to think smarter,” Mazurek says, as you must be super-observant and quick-witted to succeed.
These students are the best advertisements for Bellerose and public education you could have, Grant says. “I was so impressed with them.”
While the more senior Reach members go on to post-secondary, McCoy and Brinkhof have their eyes on getting gold at nationals next year. “I’ve had like five kids ask me even in the last few days, ‘So, when’s that Reach for the Top going to start up again?’” McCoy says.
Full results can be found at www.reachforthetop.ca.
