Beta Club Quizbowl
The Beta Club is an honor/service organization for American primary and secondary school students, which is primarily active in the greater Southeast, though it has state chapters as far north as Illinois and as far west as Texas. It is roughly analogous to the more universal National Honor Society. Since approximately 1995, the Beta Club has sponsored high school and middle school quizbowl championships at its annual national conventions. Prior to the rise of good quizbowl, some prominent teams such as Dorman and Brookwood often made sure that all of their players were Beta Club members and made a concerted effort to win this tournament, especially if they had become disenchanted with the NAC and wanted a less ethically fraught opportunity to play terrible questions. Ever since the availability of superior alternatives, this has become less common, though nationally prominent quizbowl team Dunbar still participates, as do many other active quizbowl teams from Kentucky.
The questions are currently written by Bryce Avery. There is no apparent central repository of information on who won the tournament in past years, who the previous question supplier was, or even exactly when the event started, though it was announced that the 2013 winners were Dunbar in the high school division and Blue Ridge in the middle school division.
The 2014 Beta convention, including the quizbowl tournament, is scheduled for the week of June 21-28 in Richmond, Virginia.