THE START OF CMA BIBLE QUIZZING chapter 111

Shortly after getting the youth group off the ground in the fall of 1966, I got a call from Miss Anderson, Youth Conference faculty leader at Canadian Bible College. She called about Bible quizzing. She wanted to try the quiz program and see what would happen, but she was trying to make sure there would be some teams. Could she count on me? I had worked with her on Youth Conference for three years and we had talked about the program in the past. I think I was one of the only students with some background in Bible quizzing. Ut was pretty much and American thing. I had quizzed with youth for Christ my last two years of high school. I was the stop quizzer in the state my senior  year.

I am not sure when it occurred, but Youth For Christ had closed down the quiz program and several denominations liked it so much they were starting their own.

Miss A’s sister was Mavis Weidman, the International Director of Christian Education for The Christian and Missionary Alliance and she was hoping to launch the program throughout the two countries at their big youth LIFE conference in the summer of 1967. This was going to be a test run. Who better to test the program than her sister? With no background, they were simply going to follow the old YFC program. I did know that one pretty well.

My first goal was to put a team together. I needed five, and one had to be of the opposite sex. I picked up Bob Peters and Rick Hindmarsh first, both very bright guys. Larry Clark came on board and I had talked Judy Friesen into it, but she was very busy and struggled. But she was determined to help get a youth program off the ground and as a senior was willing to just sit with the team if it would help. It did. I still needed one more person. I knew I could not just make an announcement; I was going to have to recruit personally.

Holden Bowker’s mother had come to visit me at the church to recruit me to pray with her that ten students would go from our church to Bible College. She was burdened that few University Drive kids were preparing for ministry. Of course, she talked about what a talented and brilliant student her third son was and wanted to see him have a deeper connection to the church. I told her about my quizzing call and she directed me to Holden. He was a winner. He was bright, aggressive and determined. He had a real desire to win and had the skills to do it. He also liked to challenge questionable answers and was good at it if over done at time.

1967 Saskatoon Quiz Team - third at Internationals at LIFE '69.
B: Clyde, Della, unknown (may have been from Outlook),
Ken Seimens, Elard Ratzlaff, Ken Ratzlaff, F: Holden Bowker
(captain) Cliff Miller, Judy Friesen and Bob Peters

Those first years were very primitive compared to the mechanics of later years. Besides a quizmaster, a scorekeeper worked by hand and announced the score from time to time, and there were jump judges. There were suppose to be three, but often finding one was a challenge. They would try and watch all twelve quizzers at the same time and determine who jumped first. Three teams of four each competed at one time.

Quizzers had their little tricks to win the jump. Although it was supposed to be about who got their rear off the chair first, the most flamboyant jumper usually won. To jump high and throw your arms wildly around was a wining distraction. Drawing attention often worked.We won at Youth Conference in 1967. Because of a small interest and travel there was no separate district competition that I recall. All teams from our district were at that conference and it served as our district championship. There was no separate national competition. Instead each district was invited to come to LIFE '67 at Estes Park that summer to compete for a "national title." There were only a few districts that came, most quit inexperienced. The toughest competition came from of Tenth Avenue in Vancouver and Western Pennsylvania. Out first year, we quizzed on the book of Acts. Both the other teams had former Youth For Christ quizzers as their coaches and they knew what they were doing. They both out coached me and their teams were sharp. We placed third.

Mrs. Weidman loved the results and planned for nationals the next year. 1968. It was at St. Paul - sort of the middle of the country. The teams were the same and they beat us again. What were new to us were electronic quiz seats and a big beautiful scoreboard. We were in awe. Throwing your arms in the air no longer worked. Just getting off the seat was the key. Jumps became smaller, tighter and less obvious. Some didn’t even look like they jumped. We placed third on the book of John.

Bert was from Ohio I believe. He brought all that quiz equipment out in his big black hearse. He was such a delightful guy and always cheerful and helpful. He let us all practice as needed to adjust to the technology. My team was still pretty wild in their jumps. However, Western PA had the advantage. They had Bert and his equipment at their district championships.

We went right home and commissioned an electrician to make us a set. He did and they worked, but they were about 1-1/2 inches thick and very uncomfortable. We would be competitive the next year.

In 1969 they had a plan to get more teams at nationals by setting up regional competitions first. In our case, that was also at St. Paul. So we took our church team and a district team. No one expected that one district would qualify the top two teams. We did. There was a great deal of debate about how to organize the teams. They wanted to include as many churches as possible and my selfish side was that I only believed that our church team could win. I knew we would be up against Vancouver again and did not know how we would ever pull a district team together for practice. So we did both. We held practices in Saskatoon and those from other cities came when they could. The big winner was Tom Vincent from Outlook. He made all the practices and was a great quizzer.

This is all the quizzers from 1967. The front four competed
 at LIFE, but I'm not sure who the fifth was. B: Clyde, Della,
unknown(may have been from outlook), Ken Seimens,
Elard Ratzlaff, Ken Ratzlaff F: Holden Bowjer, Cliff Miller,
Judy Friesen and Bob Peters.