For us members of the Burnett secondary Reach team, our third year in the decade-old club drew to an end on April 8, after we left the senior provincial tournament of Reach For The Top with a fifth-place finish.
As the longest-serving student on the team, I was rather amazed at how far we had come in the history of Reach for the Top at Burnett. The year before, we finished 13th.
Reach For The Top, commonly called Reach, is a nationwide club that is dedicated to trivia and, of course, buzzers.
The objective of each opposing school team, which is represented by four students in each round, is to answer, with impressive reflexes, question after question pertaining to science, literature, pop culture, history and geography.
In fact, the questions cover almost anything academically related you can think of.
Every person on the team is usually expected to have a certain field of expertise. For instance, I am the go-to guy for classic literature and the periodic table.
Another fellow Reach member is astonishingly competent at spouting the exact area codes of various cities all over the globe. Quite impressive.
I do believe it was my predilection for knowledge and my affinity for memorizing random facts that compelled me to become so immersed in the club.
Although I have sometimes felt my readings resembled nothing more than an eclectic variety of haphazard trivia, that thought soon vanished after we came in second out of 20-odd schools across B.C. in the junior provincial tournament in March, thereby acquiring marvellous silver medals.
Throughout the year, we went head-to-head with students from McMath, Richmond High and Palmer.
As one who has been greatly influenced by episodes of Jeopardy! and trivia contests on the radio, I seldom missed a game — the experience was just too thrilling.
However, there ought to be more participating schools in Richmond. There are most likely people in the other six secondary schools who share the same passion for trivia and knowledge as us, but they may be unaware of the club’s existence.
This is unfortunate, as Reach For The Top is, in fact, a very celebrated club across Canada that was established many decades ago. Until 1985, the national finals were aired on CBC-TV.
With new shows coming online and gaining popularity, it seems people grew less interested in trivia games between secondary schools; however, all of us Reach members across the nation would be genuinely delighted if the broadcasting of our games were to resume once more in a glorious renaissance.
Shawn Chang is a Grade 10 student at Burnett secondary and the recent winner of a national poetry contest. We will publish his winning poem with his next column.
