Cape Central’s Beta Club shines with 12 Top 10 awards at National Convention, including two national championships

Two 2024 graduates of Cape Girardeau Central High School attended the 44th Senior National Beta Club Convention and returned as national champions.

Anshula Vanteddu and Jackie Zhang took first place at the convention in Savannah, Georgia, in their respective competitions. Vanteddu claimed the top prize in the 12th grade science category, while Zhang finished first in the senior performing arts solo, duo, trio dance category.

Club co-sponsor Jennifer Criblez, social studies teacher at Cape Central, said she “would say it was surprising, but it’s not.”

“They're both amazing students, they’re both amazing Betas and both finished at the top at the state level,” Criblez said. “They both competed numerous times but didn't get that national winner. To get up there and be able to win the whole thing is pretty awesome.”

Vanteddu — who was salutatorian of the 2024 class and will attend Columbia University in New York City in the fall — completed her competition ahead of the convention by taking a multiple-choice science test at the high school. She had no idea how she finished until it was time for the awards presentation.

“I was blown away. It was crazy,” Vanteddu said. “I was backstage, and we were lining up to find out what place we got because they don't tell you until you're there, and nobody else had shown up. So, I was like, ‘Oh, what's going on?’ Then I found out I was first, which was amazing.”

Zhang — who served as vice president for the Beta Club and will attend Washington University in St. Louis — competed in a preliminary in front of judges. After being selected as one of the top three dancers in the competition, he was required to perform again in front of all of the convention’s attendees to claim top honors.

“There's tons and tons of dancers that are competing. If you think about it, the top three from every state, if they have a dancer, compete, and we've got 18 different states in Beta that come to this convention,” Criblez said.

Micheal "Crank" Curry, owner of Fingerprint Urban Dance Studios in Cape Girardeau and Zhang's dance coach, said Zhang has worked with him since he was 9 years old and has "done nothing but work hard and put energy into the things he loves to do."

"I think he really is the definition of 'Being Your Original', which is our motto at the studio," Curry said. "He is the walking example of what it means to be original and to be a hard worker."

Including Vanteddu and Zhang’s first-place finishes, Central’s Beta Club received 12 Top 10 awards, including six top-five finishes, with some students winning multiple awards. Criblez said the club’s second-place “Lead Outside the Box” team — consisting of Avery Criblez, Kaleigh Fisher, Sophia Gant and Libby Gorman — is one she was “most proud of".

“Unlike any of these other events, they don't get their prompt until we arrive on site,” Criblez said. “They don't know what they're going to have to do at all before that. … The judges said it was a toss-up between our club and another club for the national championship, and to get a prompt the day you arrive and have to put together a full presentation with actual feasible solutions and a budget, and present it all in two minutes or less (is incredible).”

Other Cape Central students who brought home hardware included Gant (second place in ninth-grade language arts), Avery Criblez (second place in poetry division II), Tristen Stovall (third place in 12th-grade biomedical health science), Fisher (third place in digital art division I), Alexis Weibrecht (fourth place in pottery division II), Cameron Watson (ninth place in ninth-grade biomedical health science), Jason Zhang (ninth place in ninth-grade drawing division I) and Yuliana Orellana Peralta (ninth place in ninth grade French). Additionally, Avery Criblez and Eliza Criblez placed seventh as a team in the create and animate competition.

According to Criblez, who is in her third year as co-sponsor of the Beta Club along with fellow social studies teacher Angela Womack, the club quadrupled its performance on the national stage from her first year.

“My first year we had three national winners. My second year we had four national winners, that was last year, and this year we had 12,” Criblez said. “We've really done significantly better than we did in those past two years.”

The National Beta Club is “dedicated to leading by serving others.” The organization’s four pillars — academics, character, leadership and service — provide a “perfect summation of the core of National Beta.” In addition to performing better in competition, Criblez said the club has placed an emphasis on serving the community and had increased its hours of service from 1,100 hours in her first year to 4,500 this past year.

“Our last two presidents have really put a lot of effort into promoting service opportunities, and that's where our focus is going to be,” Criblez said. “We've got a lot of other great programs at our school. The National Honors Society focuses on academics a lot, so we'll let them do that part. StuCo (Student Council) is our student government, and they really focus on leadership for our school, so let's let them do that. We will take on service. That doesn't mean that those other organizations don't do service, but that's where our focus is going to be. …

“Mrs. Womack and I are incredibly proud of these kids, and we just love what Beta Club has become,” Criblez said. “It started as a strong program in 1989 when it was founded at Cape Central but has grown significantly over the last few years. We've got some fantastic kids, even ones that choose not to compete, that are doing amazing things at Cape Central High School.”