1985 Kate Andrews
The 1985 team from Kate Andrews High School won the last CBC-produced Reach for the Top championship. Unfortunately, what happened after their championship became more newsworthy than the victory itself.
Going into the 1985 tournament, the producers and schools knew that the show would be canceled after the previous bailout in 1982 failed to increase Reach's audience. Upon Kate Andrew's victory, coach Ed Ryan was told the annually-circulating trophy was "[yours] to keep" as technicians disassembled the studio sets. Reach for the Top's national program was suspended after the tournament, and it is very likely that it will not return to the CBC.
Local "SchoolReach" events occurred in the following years, and in 1989, the national format returned under the direction of Sandy Stewart, crowning Tagwi as the first champion under the revived format. Stewart requested that Kate Andrews return the trophy so that it could be presented to the new champions. The school, which had been keeping the trophy in a display case in the lobby in the interim, refused. The 1989 tournament proceeded, and Tagwi did not receive the trophy upon their victory. Stewart did not order a new trophy, claiming that he had legal rights to the old one and was going to hold out to get it back.
By February 1990, eight months after Tagwi's championship, news of the Reach "trophy tussle" had spread across the nation, with camps split between the "village idiots" holding on to an old trophy and Sandy Stewart, who apparently relished the publicity the revived Reach was getting, saying the controversy was the "most fun I've had since the cow kicked the lamp" (indeed, this event appears to be the only time Reach for the Top was featured on the front page of a major big-city newspaper). Stewart would later get enjoyment out of harassing teams with the 1995 Bell events.
In the end, Stewart didn't win, Tagwi never got any form of trophy, a new trophy was prepared for the 1990 championship (which survived until it broke during the 2007 Reach for the Top Nationals), and Kate Andrews kept their old trophy. The school still has their trophy, holding it for a longer time than either Reach incarnation was in existence, and mentions their accomplishment on the school's website despite no longer having a Reach team.
Members
Audrey Cudrak, Stephen Pahl, David Kozbial, BJ Sailer, Ian McAnderin
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References
- "A testy trophy tussle" by Mike Lamb in The Calgary Herald, February 9, 1990, page A1