Beta Club Excels at State
Jasper County High School’s Beta Club competed at the State Beta Club convention in Savannah, January 24-26. Amongst over 2,600 student attendees, they competed in a variety of events including Robotics, Living Literature, Beta Build (an engineering challenge), Onsite Art, Advertising Design, Quiz Bowl, and various academics tests.
JCHS placed first in both Beta Build and Robotics and will advance to the national competition in June in both events. Beta Build is a Rube Goldberg style engineering challenge where students bring a variety of preapproved material from old tin cans to pulleys to Lincoln logs. They are then given an engineering challenge to complete in two hours.
This year they were asked to create an invention to either turn on/off an alarm clock, put an object in/out of a solo up, and/or attach a paper clip to an envelope. Teams are required to use at least five steps to attain one, two, or three of those goals and the JCHS team completed all of the goals and used a total of 13 steps. Team members included Alina Jablonski, Meghan Terry, Ciara Christopher, and Haley Pitchford.
For the Robotics competition, students were required to build a robot and program it. The robot had to perform an action that would fit under the broad theme of “divide and conquer.” Using legos, the team created a robot that “divided” a cardboard barrier and then “conquered” three plastic bottles by shooting them down and pushing them into a recycling bin. Team members included Chris Arnold, Landon Collier, Tyler Cooper, Cameron Snyder, Chasity Joyner, and Meghan Terry.
The school did not place but scored very well in a ‘new-to-them’ competition called Living Literature. In this competition, students take a scene from literature and create a real life representation; once in place, students “freeze” to capture the scene. This year, students chose a scene from “The Red Badge of Courage,” a Civil War novel which several of the participating students had read in English class this year. In this scene, the protagonist Henry Fleming is focused on capturing the enemy flag.
Additional student competitors for the convention included Zoe Arena, Ansley Atkinson, Tanner Fletcher, Jeffrey Fowler, Mari Jablonski, Jack Johnston, Ireland Moore, Ariel Nichols, Madison Rae, Devin Robinson, and Drew Schilling.
A special thank you to JCHS faculty members who went the proverbial extra mile to get the team ready for competition: John Graybill, Tyson Harty, Cheryl Jacobs, Peyton Proctor, and Matt Tumlin.
Regarding the overall experience of the convention, junior Ciara Christopher stated “Connections are made and laughter is key, it’s a place where we get together closer with friends, teachers, and fellow members. You can feel the love and connection just being in the facility of this place.”
Senior Zoe Arena shared, “I did things I had never done before and had fun with people I had never hung out with before. It was a great experience and I will definitely never forget the memories I made this year.”
Senior Ariel Nichols summed it up by saying ,“my first and last time at Beta convention was such a great experience that I wish I had participated earlier in high school.”