Bell

Bell High School
Location: Ottawa, ON
Coaches	Margaret Kerr
State Championships	1994 Reach
National Championships	1994 Reach
Program Status	Unknown
School Size	Unknown
NAQT Page	link

Bell High School is a public high school in suburban Ottawa, Ontario. While the year of the establishment of a Reach for the Top team there is unknown, Richard Mageau assisted for one year, during which the 1994 Bell team won the Reach national championship. Mageau has since assisted at other Ottawa-area high schools, and has the Ottawa city SchoolReach trophy named after him. Since the championship, Bell has only reached provincials twice.

Bell High School hosts two annual tournaments - BOKCHOI, a NAQT tournament in the winter, and the Bell Junior Invitational, a NAQT spring tournament for Grade 9 and 10 students.

In the 2010-2011 season, they qualified for HSNCT, but could not attend due to lack of funds. In 2011 they placed 2nd in the Ottawa Schoolreach League, qualifying for Ontario Reach provincials for the first time since the 1995 Bell squad.

The 2012 and 2013 season saw Bell out of the Ottawa quizbowl circuit.

After a hiatus, Bell re-emerged as a Quizbowl-playing school in the 2013-14 season under the leadership of Anirudh Agarwal. This revived Bell team placed second at the 2014 NAQT Ontario Provincial Championship in its first year of competition, despite being shorthanded. They mirrored LIST in the spring. The following year, Bell placed third at the 2015 NAQT Ontario Provincial Championship.

Bell fell out of the circuit until 2018-2019 season, where they were led by Kevin Fan and Abbey Wilson for one season before going into obscurity yet again.

Achievements

NAQT Ontario Provincials - 2nd, 2011 and 2014

Reach for the Top Provincials - T8th (13th by points)

Reach for the Top Regionals - Ottawa Schoolreach League - 2nd

In 2009-2010 their final rankings were:

NAQT Provincials - 9th

Reach for the Top Regionals - Ottawa Schoolreach League - 4th

Alumni

• Kevin Fan '19
• Abbey Wilson '19
• Tommy Power '15
• Scott Richardson '15
• Anirudh Agarwal '14
• Ken Caughey '13
• Mark Giles '13
• Michael Yu '12
• Brandon Zhao '13
• Bryan Wu '12
• Rossdan Craig '13
• Celine Zhang '13
• Matt Grenander '13
• Aravind Pillai '11
• Nicholas Harrison '11
• Richard Ye '11
• David Parlor '11
• Yousef Masood '11
• Kelsey Langford '11
• Trevor Kitt '11
• Wilson Zhang '10
• Christine Irwin '10

1995 Legal Controversy

In 1995, the Carleton Board of Education had a teacher work-to-rule strike, barring teachers from participating in any extra-curricular activities. However, Reach has traditionally allowed the previous national champion a bye to the provincial tournament in the following year. Bell, being the 1994 champion, was invited to the 1995 provincials.

Though the team was supervised by people other than teachers, the Ontario Secondary Schools Teachers Federation deemed the Bell team illegal. They demanded SchoolReach to cancel the 1995 tournament if Bell participated, and ordered the Ontario public school teams to boycott their schedules matches against Bell at provincials.

The students themselves had to go to court to get a special injunction to allow them to participate. Even so, some coaches threatened to boycott, some uncooperative game officials were ejected, and one Oakville coach "screamed at them".

Nevertheless, Bell managed to play each match against actual teams and fill-in officials. There were no incidents of the students themselves complaining about the presence of Bell. The defending national champions ultimately finished third in the province, one spot short of qualifying for nationals.

A full run-down of the incident can be found in newspaper archives, specifically: "Students lose title, win respect" by Keri Sweetman of the Ottawa Citizen, May 15, 1995, page B1.

Notably, there was another work-to-rule strike the year after Mageau coached another team to the championship: 2000 Merivale.