#1. The Order of the Garter (Monday, May 26, 2008)
What was your best day…ever?
I bet you were thinking there would be some cliche twist at the end here: revealing that my best day was the day before I started writing this list…or even better, that I had been saving this spot for the day that I finished writing it (May 27, 2020 for the original list).
Well, sorry to break your vision of a perfect uplifting story, but the best day of my life did not take place after I had taken in all the lessons learned and built on all the successes gained in all of those years I have lived up until now.
It happened fourteen years ago. And may or may not ever be surpassed. Who knows?
All I know is that it came down to one very hard decision.
Following several months of dedicated studying (#22), my high school quizbowl team (Lisgar) had just wrapped up a miraculous second-place finish at Provincials for Reach for the Top (Canadian quizbowl) (#10), losing a tightly-contested final game to our rivals from the University of Toronto Schools (UTS). And second place was good enough to qualify for the Reach nationals this weekend…the same weekend as the nationals for NAQT (U.S. quizbowl).
And so, the choices were:
- Go to Edmonton for Canadian nationals, playing in a field of just 12 teams. Have a decent shot at becoming Canadian national champions. Which would be awesome, and probably the greatest moment of all of our lives to that point.
- Go to Chicago to U.S. quizbowl nationals. More likely than not finish outside the top ten – in which case, we all take this as an amazing experience and move on with our lives like normal. Or, if we somehow win as the lone Canadian team in a 200-team American field…then we shock the world, and every one of us becomes a living legend for many generations over.
For reference: 2019 Canadian nationals championship game, 2019 U.S. nationals championship game.
And again, as we see in life, the ideal epic story does not materialize here. Because after a short conferral, we decided to play the odds and go with the former.
And so, it was on to Edmonton.
We fly there Friday night, stay at the University of Alberta residences, then have our seeding round-robin on Saturday. Against the eleven other provincial champions and runners-up there, we go 9-2: losing handily to UTS, and losing by 5 points to Kennebecasis Valley from New Brunswick (and last year’s national runner-up).
Saturday night we go to the West Edmonton Mall, the largest shopping mall in the world – water park, roller coasters, and regulation-size hockey rink all included. And the place is big. Very big.
We’re the 3rd-seed for the TV rounds that begin on Sunday. Our first game is against the 6th-seed West Island from Calgary. I take an early 40-point What Word am I? question by filling in the Mark Twain quote: “The coldest winter I ever spent was a [blank] in San Francisco”, with “summer”. And for the rest of the game I am a total fiend, scoring about 150 of our team’s 665 points. We shatter any past high-scoring records that may have existed.
National semifinals are Monday morning. We face off against 2nd-seed Kennebecasis Valley. I get another early 40-point What Word am I? question, by filling in “change” for the quote by Henry David Thoreau: “Things do not [blank], we [blank].”
And from there, I play the greatest game of quizbowl in my life. I keep scoring points at an astounding rate, with answers such as: Voldemort, snake (what killed Eurydice), Alex Haley, Thimphu, word (contains a root and stem and zero or more affixes), Carl Scheele. And we maintain a comfortable lead throughout the game – winning 510-360.
So it’s the finals against, who else, our rivals from UTS. A rematch, now with a national championship on the line. Lisgar has faced off against them on television four times before, losing each time. But this time, we hope, will be different.
It’s a close back-and-forth game throughout. The two teams remain tight to start, but then we pull away a little, heading into the third-last round leading 290-225. Helped by my three answers: Rudyard Kipling, 6 (Pythagorean triple with 8 and 10), and Mordecai Richler.
But in the next two rounds, Raul from UTS takes over, and UTS heads into the final 90-second lightning round with a 385-330 lead. Colin tells us, “Well, second place isn’t so bad.” But we (including him) actually have other plans.
The 90-second clock starts. This is it.
We take the first 50 points in that round (including a Akira Kurosawa response by me). Then it’s back and forth for the next 30 seconds or so. UTS is leading 415-390 with about 25 seconds left.
Host: If a roof or beam is extended beyond its –
Nigel: Cantilever.
(UTS 415, Lisgar 400)
Host: What was the name of the colony first established –
Lijiang: (doesn’t know)
Host: – by the pilgrims?
Colin (after conferring): Massachusetts.
Host: Nope, Plymouth
Host: What sport in more commonly known in North America as association –
Nigel: Soccer.
(UTS 415, Lisgar 410)
Host: What did Euclid define as the distance between two points that –
Nigel: A line.
(Lisgar 420, UTS 415)
There are about three seconds left on the clock, and the final question comes.
“What religious and military order was founded –”.
There’s about one second left when I buzz in. And I know I have no answer; but I also know there will be no more time. “The…” I say, trying to think of something quickly. “Order of the Garter.”
The time for my answer sounds right after Order, but just before then I see the clock tick down to zero and turn red. Outside of my hearing, someone from UTS does buzz in with the correct answer.
There is mass chaos. The score says 420-415 in favor of us. Several of the UTS team members are livid, claiming Raul buzzed in before the time ended. There is a lot of background discussion between the organizers, and then they tell us that they’ll get back to taping and announce the verdict and winner live there.
So the tape starts rolling.
“And congratulations, the winner of the 2008 Reach for the Top National Championship is…”
This is, after all, the best day of my life, so you know the ending to this one already.
“Lisgar Collegiate Institute!”