Portageville High School celebrates first-ever state Beta officer with JuJu Priggel's historic win

SIKESTON — Portageville High School junior Julianna “JuJu” Priggel recently won the state contest to serve as the Beta president, marking the first state officer for her school.

The 2025 Missouri State Beta Convention was held Jan. 16-18 in Branson, Missouri, according to Priggel, who earned her victory on Jan. 18.

According to Priggel, and her Beta sponsor, Christina Brands, the state Beta convention is yearly and there are three sessions during the convention. It was during the third session when it was announced she’d won president.

“This is Portageville’s first-ever state officer,” Brands said. “So we are all very proud of that. I have been the sponsor for 11 years, and we have had seven people that ran for office before she did.”

Priggel said she has known for a couple of years that she would one day run for state president.

“I decided that I wanted to run for president when I was a freshman so it’s been a long time coming,” Priggel said. “So when the time came to run, I made up a campaign, ‘JuJu on that Beta’ instead of the song Juju on that beat.’”

Priggel said during the second session at the convention she did a little skit to “JuJu on that Beta,” and she had a speech and that there was also a Q&A.

According to Priggel, she ran against five other candidates for president and everyone that was at the convention was able to vote for the candidates online on the Beta app.

Priggel explain edit was her older sister who inspired her to run.

“My sister ran about seven years ago, and she ended up not winning Beta president,” Priggel said.

According to Brands, Priggel will be the state president until March of next year, which is when the next state convention is.

Priggel said Portageville is one of the leading schools that have the most amount of people who attend the convention.

“This year we had about 90 people go this year,” Priggel said. “Which we are a very small school, but we are very involved in Beta.”

According to Brands, when Priggel won state president, everyone was very excited.

“Oh, it was a lot of excitement,” Brands said. “People were standing up cheering, and I think there were even a few tears.”

According to Priggel, since she is now state president, she will have to run for National Beta President this summer in Orlando.

According to Brands, the officers are in charge of the convention each year and Priggel and the other officers will be helping facilitate the convention with the national Beta sponsors.

Priggel said she will get to attend another state convention of her choosing as a representative of Missouri.