Bellerose Composite High School’s Reach for the Top team is doing exactly that — they have an invite to the nationals for the game show-like competition, after stealing silver in provincials last weekend.
Five local students showed their trivia chops, answering questions on Canadian culture, math and sciences, music and the humanities, facing off against other regional winners from around the province at Calgary’s Webber Academy.
The competition is based on the British TV series Top of the Form.
Brian Grant, an English teacher at Bellerose and coach to the kids, said this victory was a bit of an upset perhaps.
Old Scona Academy High School in Edmonton had two teams in the competition, both of which he’d expected to take the two top spots. One of Old Scona’s teams did indeed take gold, but the Bellerose team knocked out the other, something Grant attributed to studious hard work.
“I was very, very impressed and proud of them,” he said. “[It was because of] some very smart young men and women that got together regularly — once per week for an hour per week and we’ve been doing this most of the year.”
It was a close call once Bellerose got to the all-important elimination round.
They beat one Old Scona team 340 points to 320 — a difference of just a couple of questions. But given their goal going in was to simply make it to that elimination round, it was an exciting outcome.
For one, the team will be headed east to Toronto for the nationals.
“We’re practicing every day now until we go,” said Collin Title, 17. “It’s just going to be studying, a lot of studying different things. We have kind of got an idea from the questions that were asked at provincials as to what kinds of topics we need to work on.”
The kids are breaking down topics based on individual strengths. Title is the science whiz.
Gwen Rosser, 18, is the arts, history and pop culture girl.
But one thing she — and Grant — were surprised by was a noticeable lack of pop culture in the provincials.
There was no “who’s Snooki?” said Grant.
“In the practice packages we received, there were way more [pop culture] questions,” said Rosser. “And then especially when you got into the finals level it suddenly became all English monarchs and Post-Reformation. It was a little bizarre, but it’s all right.”
Rosser said the team will simply have to buckle down. They might not have expected to get to the nationals, but now that they have they are taking it seriously.
“I have great faith in them — they really are a very good team,” said Grant.
The nationals will take place sometime in late May or early June. It is just a matter now of figuring out who is going. Grant said the school can send up to eight, and four students can be played at a time.
He is not sure yet how many the school can afford to send.
Bellerose will definitely send a team of some sort to Toronto, he said. They made it this far, after all.
