Scarcely had the words "bay" and "island" been uttered than a young man correctly answered, "San Francisco."
And this: "In 800, what Frankish king ..." - "Charlemagne," a contestant responded - "... was crowned Holy Roman Emperor," quizmaster Joe Motiki finished gamely.
The same contestant also scored on a follow-up question that required him to name Charlemagne's nephew who was killed at the Battle of Roncesvalles (Roland) but failed to answer a much harder request to name Charlemagne's heir, Louis the Pious - aka the Debonair, though Motiki tamely called him just Louis I.
Speed didn't always work. "Athena is like another ..." - buzz! "Minerva!" a response that would have been correct for the name of Athena's Roman equivalent but wrong for the one asked, about what Athena had in common with Ares, for which the answer was that they were both war gods. None of the eight students could answer that one. But when the same goddess (was this Athenian bias?) came up in another question concerning what won Athena the prize for the most useful invention, the correct response - olive tree - was swiftly given.
In his Essays (1625), Francis Bacon complains, "What is truth asked jesting Pilate, and would not stay for an answer." These boys on the new Reach for the Top have outdone the former Roman governor of Judaea, not even staying for a complete question.
And boys they all were, at least for the hours the National Post was present. In the curious sport that is Reach for the Top, the vast majority of coaches are women teachers, and the vast majority of players are young and male. This has been true since the show began in 1961 until the CBC dropped it in 1984, and through its Dark Ages as it persisted in Canadian high schools, picked up here and there by various educational broadcasters.
TVO and Reach for the Top are now engaged in an ambitious re-launch, hoping to overcome the conundrum that caused CBC to drop the program in spite of its famous brand name across the country.
The conundrum is that quiz-show watchers are typically over 18 while Reach for the Top's contestants are from 14 to 18 years old. Thus, as a spectator sport, it has never found favour with the very age group it is intended to serve.
The show's rebranding may work
A man of providence has been sought, and perhaps found, in Reach for the Top's wildly mobile new host, Motiki, formerly of TVO Kids. It could turn out to be a sound career move for him, considering that Alex Trebek, long-time quizmaster of Jeopardy, once presided over Reach for the Top.
Motiki is a high-energy person, both on and off screen, he says. Did I accuse him of tameness a few paragraphs ago? A calumny! He offers the program a hopeful link to the larger youth culture, leaping around like an unusually short basketball player, talking with rap-style excitement, delighting the players by addressing them as "brother" and "bro", praising them with "You're the man!" or "You're on the board!"
The teenagers were unmistakably charmed. The show's rebranding may work.
Yet there were surprising blind spots. Asked to name the participle in a sentence, they could not. A pair of competing teams drew a blank on Bill Graham, the Foreign Affairs Minister - though Therese Casgrain, a deceased feminist, was immediately recognized. None of these youths could identify Mordecai Richler's first novel, The Acrobats (for which Richler would probably have been glad) - yet Lord Byron they knew.
The contestants' pursuits were not all predictable.
Stephen Holt, a freshly bearded student from North Dundas C.I. in Chesterville, Ont., favours cow-tipping; best done when the cow is sleeping, he says. Another had been impeached from the student council (he explained he'd deliberately run afoul of the rules because he'd never wanted to be on it).
The other Ontario schools taking part this week in the quarter finals were University of Toronto Schools (UTS) and Community Hebrew Academy of Toronto (CHAT), Fellowes High School, of Pembroke and Kitchener C.I.
We shall not reveal any results, since these contests are to be broadcast in the fall. But with multiple lead changes back and forth, Motiki pronounced two of the rounds to be classics.
NATIONAL POST Arts & Life Gerald Owen May 16, 2002
