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Quiz Show Finale Features Mount Greylock Team
By Stephen Dravis, iBerkshires Staff
10:07AM / Saturday, June 18, 2016
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The Mount Greylock quiz team appears on WGBY in the semifinals against Lenox Memorial.


Mount Greylock's quiz team faces off against Holyoke on Saturday night.

UPDATE: Holyoke Catholic was the winner of the final, which aired on Saturday evening. The following story was posted on Saturday morning:

WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — Mount Greylock Regional School has won its share of titles on the athletic field, and speed is always a factor.


It turns out speed also helps the Mounties exceed in their academic battles.

"I think we were one of the fastest teams," Aaron Kleiner said of the school's four-man team in public television's "As Schools Match Wits" competition. "We have a Latin club at the school that participates in a game called certamen. … I think everyone on our [quiz show] team has played certamen before, and it's very speed oriented."

This winter and spring, Kleiner, his brother Matthew, Jesse Cohen and Simon Kent sped through three wins in "As Schools Match Wits," a production of WGBY that dates back to 1961.

On Saturday at 7 p.m., the Western New England's PBS affiliate will air the championship match, where Mount Greylock met Holyoke Catholic for the Collamore Cup.

There is a risk-reward quality to Mount Greylock's aggressive approach on the buzzer, though it stood them in good stead in the all-Berkshire County semi-final, where Mount Greylock defeated Lenox to earn a berth in the finals.

"I think we missed several answers we could have gotten if we'd waited longer, but there's a risk the other team will get there before you, which is worse than waiting, too," Aaron Kleiner said.

The Kleiner brothers were part of the 2013-14 ASMW championship team at Mount Greylock — the third in four years for the school.

After living in Italy for a year with their family, the brothers returned to the quiz team as juniors this year, joining classmates Cohen and Kent to make yet another run to the title match.

Kleiner said the team did not do much in the way of formal practices. Three of the competitors have experience on the show, and although the squad did not break out the buzzers for a dry run, it did watch past episodes of the show to familiarize itself with the kinds of questions it would see.

The championship match that airs on Saturday was shot in April at Westfield State University. Kleiner could not talk about the result - at least not for this article.

"At the studio, they said, 'Don't post it online,' " he said. "You are allowed to tell people you're close to.

"It wasn't too bad. I told my parents and my family. I told my closest friends at school.

"As you can imagine, there weren't too many people coming up to me in the street asking about it."

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