By Miles Layton

GATESVILLE — Members of Central Middle School’s National Beta Club returned home with more than a suitcase full of souvenirs this year — they came back with trophies, top-ten finishes, and stories to tell the Gates County Board of Education.

Why cover this story? Because we need to celebrate academic achievement as much as athletic success. Beta Club is a good group — students must have at least a 3.0 GPA to participate. And Central Middle School’s Beta Club has won many awards and accolades over the years.  

A gallery of photos appears at the end of the story.

Subscribe — it’s free!

The club shared highlights of its trip to the National Beta Club Convention, held at the Gaylord Opryland Resort & Convention Center in Nashville, Tennessee, during Monday’s school board meeting. This year’s convention theme was “Wired for Success,” and for Central Middle’s students, the path there was anything but simple.

Sponsors Barbara Austin, the school counselor at CMS, and Susan Brown, the school’s media coordinator, told board members the year began the way it always does: sixth graders coming in as newcomers to the club while seventh and eighth graders — already familiar with the routine — dove straight into preparing for competitions. Students spent the fall semester practicing for the state convention, originally scheduled for February in Greensboro. But winter weather intervened, forcing organizers to hold the event virtually instead — something Brown said hadn’t happened since the COVID-19 pandemic.

Despite the disruption, Central Middle students placed well enough at state to advance, and some had already secured spots at nationals earlier in the year through the Leadership Convention in Williamsburg. After a brief pause following the virtual state event, students returned to campus after the school year ended to keep preparing for Nashville.

“Their dedication to Beta Club and the things that they were invested in really speaks to their character as well as the support of their parents,” Brown told the board.

The hard work paid off. Central Middle brought home several individual and team awards, including a seventh-place national finish for the Project Proposal team of Charlotte Turner, Antoine Jordan, Natalie Heckenlaible, Grace Harders, and Reese Cain, who was a last-minute stand-in for Indya Smith, who was unable to attend due to a death in the family. Their project, “Beta Bridge,” sent middle schoolers into elementary classrooms to help teachers with activities such as a Beta Buddies mentoring program and a Science Day event.

In academic competition, seventh grader Natalie Heckenlaible placed fourth in the state for poetry and earned strong feedback from national judges for a humorous poem written from the perspective of a used dry-erase marker. Seventh grader Gavinh Barnes placed in the top 20 nationally in science out of roughly 9,000 attendees — just outside the top 10 that receive national recognition.

An ethics team, Being Better Betas, featuring Madison Weller, Zachery Patterson, Charlotte Turner, and Natalie Heckenlaible took eighth in the nation using a Clemson University ethical decision-making framework to work through a hypothetical group-project dilemma involving a student unable to contribute due to circumstances at home.

Central Middle’s engineering team, consisting of Antoine Jordan, Reece Williams, Corbin Oliver, Jake Williams, and Will Boyce, built a free-standing tower designed to hold a tennis ball using tissue boxes, cups, paper towel rolls, popsicle sticks, and rubber bands. The team didn’t place this year, but sponsors noted it marked their second consecutive trip to nationals — no small feat, they said, given the program’s hopes of eventually extending Beta Club into the high school. The competition also came with a scramble: the team’s tennis ball had been left behind in North Carolina, and parent Mrs. Krystle Williams tracked down replacement balls in the 40 minutes before competition began.

Other students designed an adhesive clothing item — a hat incorporating the four pillars of Beta Club (service, character, leadership and achievement) — while a separate team rewrote the nursery rhyme “Baa Baa Black Sheep” into a Beta-themed song touching on the same four pillars, performing it live for judges after qualifying at the November Leadership Convention.

A team that had placed sixth nationally the previous year for inventing an assistive device for elderly community members returned with a new creation, a walker-mounted storage accessory. The team didn’t place this year, but advisers said students remain motivated by finding ways to help older adults.

Central Middle’s strongest showing came from its “Create to Animate” team, which placed fifth in the nation — the first top-five national finish advisers could recall in their time at the school. Students Reese Cain, Gavinh Barnes, Colton Hobbs, and Lilly Taylor had 25 seconds to produce a stop-motion animated video on one of three assigned topics; the group chose to showcase sights to see in Nashville, filming individual frames on a cellphone.

Cheers to Asher Brown, Kesean Holley, and Colton Oliver, who also participated in their first National Convention

Advisers said the moment underscored something bigger than any trophy. Competing against schools with far more resources, Central Middle’s students built their winning project with construction paper, popsicle sticks and printed photos — proof, Austin said, that success in Beta Club comes down to the effort students are willing to put in.

Beyond competition, the trip included a Nashville Sounds baseball game, a private showing at the Grand Ole Opry, and an Uber ride complete with karaoke, bubbles and lights. Some students and parents also explored the Gaylord Opryland’s indoor attractions, including its water slides, during downtime between events.

Many of the students recognized Monday night are eighth graders who will move on to high school next year. Advisers told the board they hope to expand Beta Club opportunities at the high school level so those students can keep competing. Austin and Brown closed by thanking the Board of Education for the chance to represent Gates County in Nashville, along with the parents who supported the club throughout the year.

Click to make image larger.