BETA sweeps the floor at Concord, NC

On Monday morning, October 8, the BETA club took 10 students to compete in a Leadership Summit in Concord, North Carolina, at Great Wolf Lodge. These excited BETA students were sophomore Brett Adams, senior Eli Ashworth, senior Pragya Chaturvedi, sophomore Katelyn Dabbs-Dodd, sophomore Kayleigh Griffith, senior Mary-Catherine Jones, junior Brooke Lahti, junior Ca-ron Murphey, and junior Amanda Talbott. The Leadership Summit started the morning of October 8 and was finished in the afternoon of October 9.

The BETA club competed in three out of the four competitions: Lead Outside the Box, Rapid Response, and Leadership Representative for the region. All the events the Trojan BETAs entered, qualified for nationals and became a leadership representative

Rapid response was the BETAs first competition. In Rapid Response, there was a team of five students: sophomore Derek Dallas, sophomore Katelyn Dabbs-Dodd, sophomore Kayleigh Griffith, junior Brooke Lahti, and junior Ca-ron Murphey. Also, the students had to be creative and collaborate with their teammates. The team had to complete two different puzzle boxes in a timed scenario. The BETAs split up and worked on the boxes separately. They ended up solving the puzzles in under a minute, which was an awesome win.

For the Leadership Representative, only one person from the BETA club could compete. Amanda Talbott was presented with the opportunity to run for Leadership Representative. There were three positions available at the regional level and six competitors. Talbott was nervous since this was her first interview. She overcame the nerves by studying interview questions and becoming more familiar with the BETA mission and four pillars. The interview was in a small room with all six competitors and five judges.

The first part of the interview was a collaborative short project with one other competitor. The paired two were assessed on creativity and their ideals on the matter. After the collaborative project, the judges fired questions at everybody. Talbott was very relaxed since she had studied and became familiar with interview questions.

Finally, the competitors were asked to sell themselves to the judges as if it were an advertisement. Talbott stood up with great positivity and pitched herself to the judges, which landed her to be Leadership Representative. She will be recognized at state convention, and will proudly be running for National Leadership Representative.

Lead Outside the Box was the third competition that took place on the second day of the trip. The team of four had to make a power point or poster board explained what they could do to cut budgets of a struggling school. The team included Eli Ashworth, Mary-Catherine Jones, Brett Adams, and Pragya Chaturvedi, who were very nervous but prepared. The leadership team presented their poster board to two judges that listened intently. After the presentation, the judges asked questions about the team’s ideas. The team responded confident with all the research and hard work formed from the night before. The team is very excited to qualify for nationals, and will get there scorecard from the event soon.

Not only did the BETAs compete, but they had a ton of fun at the summit meetings, officer training, and hanging by the pool.  The regional summit had two speakers, Bill Cordes and Scott Backovich, which inspired the students that went to be more involved with their community.

“They both talked about finding your strengths and weaknesses and using them to help those around you to the best of your ability.” said Ashworth.

After the last summit meeting, the national BETA sponsor announced the qualifiers for the national level and the leadership representatives.