This spring, 20 eighth-graders will compete for $10,000 on a game show designed to get Maine kids thinking about college.

Nearly half of the competitors are from the Lewiston-Auburn area.

Kick Start, which will air on the New CW Portland channel, pits middle-schoolers against one another in half-hour competitions. Billed as a Maine version of Nickelodeon’s “Double Dare,” the show will include trivia challenges, physical challenges and goo.

More than 100 eighth-graders tried out for the show in open casting calls held earlier this month. Instead of focusing on the smartest, fastest, strongest kids, the show’s creators chose contestants based on where they live, their personalities and their goals.

“We wanted kids who wanted to go on to college,” said John Marshall, the show’s producer and creative director at CW Portland.

Eight of the contestants are from local schools: Auburn Middle School, Bruce M. Whittier Middle School in Poland, Lewiston Middle School, Minot Consolidated School, Oxford Hills Middle School in South Paris, Sabattus Central School and Trinity Catholic School in Lewiston.

The Kick Start game show is part of Maine’s Kick Start Campaign, a statewide initiative to get seventh-, eighth- and ninth-graders ready for college. The campaign is funded by the National Governors Association and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

The Kick Start mascot, Norm the talking donkey, debuted during a statewide Super Bowl commercial.

The game show will begin filming in March. Four kids will compete in each of five episodes, with a sixth episode featuring five finalists. The winner will get a $10,000 college scholarship.

“It’s all or nothing,” Marshall said.

The show will include subtle messages about the importance of college, with a more obvious pitch during commercials and on the show’s Web site.

Kick Start will begin airing the game show at the end of March. No date has been set.

The CW Portland is Channel 12 for Time Warner customers and Channel 5 on Oxford Networks.

The local contestants are Kayla Turner of Norway, Stephanie Sirois of Minot, Joe Bosse of Sabattus, Sophia Goulet of Lewiston, Jacob Tyler Neal of Poland, Michael Lucas of Auburn, Matt Butler of Lewiston and Eric Woods of Sabattus.