The News Herald (Willoughby, OH)
Center to defend Mind Challenge title
Will the Mentor Senior Center retain its Mind Challenge champion status in 2020?
Based on the fact that the number of senior centers participating in the trivia tournament has risen sharply since last year, Mentor is definitely facing broader competition.
In 2019, the inaugural year of “Mind Challenge for the New Majority,” 16 teams from various senior centers answered a myriad of questions focusing on minutiae while following a competitive format patterned after the NCAA’s annual basketball tournament.
During the final match, a crew of seniors from the Mentor Senior Center pulled out the win against Rocky River and netted a $2,500 first-place prize for the center.
This year, the game’s overwhelming popularity prompted 36 senior centers from across Northeast Ohio to throw their thinking caps into the ring.
“After word got around… we had to start pinching ourselves because we started getting phone calls from city after city after city,” said Phil Levine of Score Communications.
Levine and partner Art Greenberg initiated the hot contest to enrich seniors’ brain fitness and enhance socialization.
Team formation meetings took place earlier this month while regional play in a knockout format is planned for February, March and April.
The brainy matches will culminate in a championship set for May 6 at the Jack Thistledown Racino in North Randall. A guest speaker, yet to be announced, also will be featured.
Last year, local television news reporter Leon Bibb addressed the crowd gathered at the Solon Senior Center for the finale.
Representatives from the Cleveland area event’s four regions – east, west, southeast and southwest – will be present.
Along with the surge in the number of contestants the ante has been upped as well. The prize for the winning team’s center is $3,500, followed by $2,000, $1,500 and $1,000 for the second-, third- and fourthplace teams respectively.
On Jan. 16, about 20 people, including the current champions, assembled at the Mentor Senior Center to take part in practice rounds of trivia and potentially form additional groups.
Answers to questions such as “In what year did the Soviet Union launch the first man in to space?” (1961) and “From 2010 to 2014 what ABC-TV sitcom won the Emmy Award five years in a row?” (Modern Family) were deliberated.
Former federal government worker Diana Remaley of Mentor-on-the-Lake said she decided to join “to do something different, meet new people and share my 80-year-old mind with people.” Admitting that she wasn’t a game player as a rule, after getting a taste the Mind Challenge she said it intrigued her and would probably continue on with the challenge.
Joining Bill Nicastro of Willoughby to comprise a prospective team were longtime teachers Pat Coil of Mentor and Liz Schormuller of Perry Township. Coil taught social studies in Lake County for 32 years.
And although delivering several correct answers from a mixture of fields, Schormuller was anxious to dig in to questions related to science or math, subjects she had taught at Mentor High School for 40 years.
Bill Quigney of Mentor, a member of last year’s winning brain trust, noted that he was back on board to “have some fun and defend our title.”
All team rosters will be finalized by Feb. 4, according to Levine.