Friday was National Manufacturing Day, and several groups of Greene County High School students got the opportunity to visit and tour a couple of local manufacturing companies.

American Athletic Incorporated/Spalding in Jefferson and John Deere in Paton were the two locations selected for this year’s tours. Greene County Development Corporation Executive Director Ken Paxton described the primary reason why they help facilitate these different visits with the high school students.

“One of our key ideas here is to try to keep as many of our graduates and our kids here in our own community. We have a lot of manufacturing, we’re blessed to have that, so that means there’s also a lot of jobs and a lot of opportunities. We want to make sure that our kids know what opportunities are out there so they can take advantage of them and hopefully stay in our community and help grow our community.”

AAI/Spalding Human Resources Manager Kristin Russell echoed Paxton’s comments while also explaining her favorite parts of working for a company that manufactures gymnastic and cheerleading equipment, along with basketball and volleyball equipment that is used globally.  

“The pride that the employees have in the brands that we manufacture here and the fact that they get to see them on tv everyday. There’s a lot of employee pride with that and again that it’s right here in Jefferson and we’ve been doing it since 1954.”

Career Academy Specialist Teresa Green says 41 students participated, along with industrial technology instructor Matthew Fielder, career academy welding instructor Jerredd Elken and iJAG instructor Misty Hermansen were also joined by Paxton and Jason Cerveny with GCDC and Multicultural Family Resource Center Director Sara Huddleston.