For members of the Lisgar Collegiate Institute senior quiz team, the beginning of a new school year means more than just going back to class. It means its national title defence is about to begin.
“I think they have a great deal of potential,” volunteer coach Ruth Crabtree says about this year’s team.
The Lisgar quiz team competes in academic quiz competitions that feature questions from a variety of different categories, from fine arts to sports.
The team has won four provincial championships since 2010, and their stellar reputation was solidified in May when they won the Canadian National History Bowl and the Reach for the Top national championship.
Two years ago, Crabtree retired from teaching after 16 years at Lisgar, but remains coach of the team.
Colin Veevers, who was in Grade 9 at the time, joined three of his senior teammates in Toronto to compete for the Reach national title after qualifying two weeks earlier.
Despite the school’s longstanding record of success, both Crabtree and Veevers say their Reach victory was a surprise, as Lisgar finished the preliminary round with nine wins and five losses.
In Veevers’ opinion, this record was disappointing. However, Lisgar managed to qualify for the next round. In a nail-biting quarterfinal match against Vancouver’s Eric Hamber Secondary, Veevers’ correctly answered a tie-breaking question on lobster fishing, setting up a semifinal match against a familiar foe.
“We knew we’d be up against some tough teams, some old rivals, particularly the University of Toronto School,” says Crabtree.
Lisgar’s rivalry with UTS became particularly heated in the 2008 Reach championship, when it was determined by video review that UTS had pressed their buzzer after time had expired. This ruling gave Lisgar its first Reach national title.
Veevers says the kinds of questions they saw in the playoff round gave his team a chance to win.
“Through the playoff round the questions became more to our liking in terms of the content, so we began to do better,” says Veevers.
After pulling off a major upset against UTS, Lisgar beat New Brunswick’s Kennebecasis Valley High School in the final match, claiming their second ever Reach national title.
The upcoming season presents a new set of challenges for Lisgar.
Crabtree says three out of the four players who won Reach for the Top have graduated, making this year’s club entirely composed of Grade 10 and 11 students.
Veevers says he is excited for this opportunity, and he hopes to fill in the shoes of the players who have graduated.
“It’s really a big year for the younger players to show what we can do to take over the place of the Grade 12s who had so much experience,” Veevers says. “It’s a tough task, but it’s a task we’re really looking forward to.”
Part of what has made the Lisgar quiz team so successful is their ability to survive the turnover of students.
“We’ve been fortunate that we’ve maintained continuity,” says Crabtree. “Even if there is a gap of a year, we don’t have to wait through many leaner years to get a stronger team together. There always seems to be an interested group coming through.”
Crabtree says part of what helps maintain the team’s continuity is the guidance that more experienced team members can share with the newcomers.
Veevers says he is prepared to guide the younger players and he thinks he will help lead the Reach for the Top squad this year.
Sheena Li, an eleventh grader who is new to the senior team, says she is excited for what is to come.
“There are some pretty interesting tournaments planned for this year,” says Li. “We’re thinking of going to Ithaca (New York) and Toronto.”
While the start of the new season is exciting, Li and her teammates are aware of how drastically their team has changed since May.
“We’d like to live up to their achievements, but as we’re less experienced and younger, it’ll be hard,” says Li. “It’s definitely a goal for next year, though.”