Trivia club refocuses for 2025–26 season

Remembered as a TV series of the same name that aired mostly on CBC starting in the early 1960s, Reach for the Top is an academically themed trivia competition played between high school teams of four. More recently, its national finals have been uploaded to a dedicated YouTube channel. UCC has traditionally sent one or two teams to compete against other GTA schools.  

But this year, the club isn’t planning to participate in Reach for the Top tournaments, favouring the Consensus Trivia circuit instead. 

“The Reach for the Top finals coincide with IB exams,” explains Suzanne Monir, the club’s faculty adviser, and chemistry teacher for Years 11 and 12. “So even though we’ve qualified for the past two years, we could never take part in the finals.”

The trivia club meets weekly during Flex Time to practise, and is run by student heads Christian Ciraco (Year 12) and Mason Freedman (Year 11) and Monir. Ten to 20 participants regularly show up. 

“Everyone gathers around with buzzers and we play a set of questions,” explains Year 11 student Jerry Pang, a club member and executive. The practise content usually consists of packs of 100 questions from past Consensus or Reach for the Top tourneys. 

“If I can make it, I take over reading the questions and give the heads a break, to make sure they also get some practise time in,” Monir says. 

Subjects are wide-ranging, encompassing math, science, history, literature, art, pop culture, and sports. Every student has their strengths. 

“I’m a little better at geography, history, literature, general knowledge, and musical theatre in particular,” Pang says. 

The club looks to build teams in which each member’s expertise complements the others’. Generally, the way the game is played, a quizmaster asks a question, and the first person on either team to smack their buzzer can answer. Monir says members’ preparation often goes beyond the question packs.  

“If we recognize an overall area of weakness, then somebody who’s an expert can make a package on it, and we focus on that,” she says. “Otherwise they can study up on those areas on their own.”

William Marcotte ’24 helped take the club to the next level as team captain in his final two years at the College. He joined Reach for the Top when he was in Year 8. 

“I watched a lot of Jeopardy as a kid and loved playing trivia,” says Marcotte, who is currently pursuing a pharmacology and biochemistry double major with a minor in history at U of T.

“Joining UCC in Year 8 — which is uncommon — I didn’t know anybody. But I knew there were clubs. I knew I was pretty good at trivia and decided to give it a try.”

Under Marcotte, the team twice qualified for the Reach for the Top provincials, including a top eight-showing. In Consensus, the team had a third-place showing at the regionals and made the nationals. UCC’s main GTA competitors include University of Toronto Schools (UTS), Northern Secondary School and Marc Garneau Collegiate.

The captains also organize UCC house trivia, in which houses compete for points, with play-ins and playoffs. The events are not only popular but also help identify trivia talent. And they are not without controversy.  

     

“It’s a selfless job, when you have 20 UCC students yelling at you that their answer should be counted as correct, and you have to decide that it’s not,” Marcotte says with a smile. 

There will be a Consensus competition this month at UCC and another in December, followed in the spring by the national competition, if UCC advances. The team’s top-two result at the regionals last year gained it entry to the Consensus finals in Ottawa. 

The students are joyful when they succeed, as when they defeated a previously dominant UTS team during a friendly match last year.

 

“I remember the boys not believing they could do it,” Monir says. “Our team just came from nowhere. And after they won, they were jumping and dancing. It was so fun.”