DeKalb West School chose Karen France as its Teacher of the Month.

November 18, 2019
By: Bill Conger

DeKalb West School chose Karen France as its Teacher of the Month.

“Being chosen as teacher of the month is a great honor,” says France. “There are lots of amazing teachers at DeKalb West and to be able to work with these teachers on a daily basis is a privilege. I love coming to work knowing that everyone around me is working hard with the common goal of doing what’s best for our students.”

“Mrs. France has high expectations for all her students and strives to achieve that with each student,” Principal Sabrina Farler said. “She does a wonderful job differentiating her instruction for each student. DeKalb West School is blessed to have her as our 8th grade math and science teacher.”

France has been teaching 8^th grade for 15 years, the last five years of which were at DWS. A 2001 graduate of DeKalb County High School, she attended Motlow State in Tullahoma on an academic and athletic scholarship where she played softball for two years. Then, she earned her Bachelors, Masters and Educational Specialist degrees all from Tennessee Tech.

France says she first knew she wanted to pursue a career in education when she was a student at DWS.

“In sixth grade my homeroom teacher was Ms. Jeanna Caplinger, and she always let some of her students help out around the classroom. That was the year I decided I wanted to become a teacher. At the time, I thought it was so much fun to clean the room and grade papers, but now, those are the things I HATE doing in my classroom,” France says with a laugh.

“I had the opportunity to have Mrs. France as a student during my first year of teaching at DeKalb Middle School,” says teacher Jeanna Caplinger. “She was a very helpful student that always brightened my day and helped me to survive that first year.”

“Teaching is not what I expected it to be,” France admits. “I have always loved school, and I was always a great student. Learning came easy to me so I assumed teaching would be easier, but it’s not. Planning lessons, preparing materials, grading papers, etc is a lot more work than I thought it would be.”

Congratulations to Karen France, Teacher of the Month at DWS!

November 17, 2019
By: Dwayne Page

The DCHS Tiger and Lady Tiger basketball teams will launch their 2019-20 season this week with Hall of Fame matchups at Van Buren County Tuesday night and at home against Pickett County Saturday night.

Action begins at 6:00 p.m. each night starting with the girls game.

WJLE will have LIVE coverage Tuesday night with the Voice of the Tigers and Lady Tigers John Pryor. Listen for Tiger Talk prior to tip off at 5:30 p.m. featuring Coaches Danny Fish and John Sanders and players Kenzie France, Mya Ruch, Megan Walker, Emme Colwell, Michael Elswick, Dakota White, and Dallas Cook.

(View video interview of Coach Danny Fish here).

DCHS Lady Tiger Coach Danny Fish from dwayne page on Vimeo.

The Lady Tigers are hoping to duplicate the success of last year’s team which made it to the quarterfinals of the state tournament.

Although this year’s team will be without the leadership of Lydia Brown, Maddison Parsley, and Joni Robinson, who all graduated last year, Coach Danny Fish said he expects others to fill the void, especially his four seniors Mya Ruch, Megan Walker, Kenzie France, and Emme Colwell.

Last year Colwell and Freshman Kadee Ferrell were named to the 1st Team-All Region. Ferrell was also on the All-District 2nd Team and she made the All-Freshmen Team. Colwell was named to the 3rd Team All-District and Ruch made the All-Defensive Team.

“Emme and Mya have started for four years now. Emme’s role will stay about the same for us to try and score and defend but Mya’s role will have to change a little bit. The past couple of years she has been a facilitator. This year we are going to ask her to score more so we are hoping she will accept the challenge and step up and replace some of those points scored by Lydia last year,” said Coach Fish.

“Kenzie had a good year last year. She is very enthusiastic and an emotional player. She brings that edge for us,” he continued.

“Megan Walker is back. She was out the entire season last year with an injury. She has had a really good summer and strong fall so we expect her to be full throttle for the year”.

I am anxious to see if Kadee is going to come back and have another spectacular year as a sophomore. She was unbelievable as a freshman”.

“Megan Cantrell, a junior this year can really shoot it. I believe she is going to be able to come in and find her role for the team”.

“We have Grace Griffin coming off the bench. She is a stretch four player who can really shoot the rock. I am interested to see how she is going to do,” said Coach Fish.

Unfortunately, the Lady Tigers will be without the services of Kennedy Agee, who has again torn an ACL and will be sidelined for the season.

“We are missing Kennedy. She tore her ACL last year but came back and had a really great rehab but in practice last week she tore it again. I feel really bad for her and the team. We were expecting a lot from her but someone else will have to step up,” Coach Fish said.

“We have been working hard and I am excited to watch the kids play. Hopefully defense will be the strength of the team. I pride myself on being a defensive coach. Offensively we will introduce some different things because we have different personnel this year. In the past we have been mostly guard oriented. This year we have a lot of big bodies so we will have to change the pace in which we play and maybe change some things we try to do in our motion. Defensively I think we can be locked down in half court which is good. Things I see that may give us some issues are that we really have to rebound. We are a little bit bigger than last year but we still have no six footers in our lineup so we are really going to have to rebound. I hope we can develop some chemistry and continuity on offense to push ourselves up to 50-60 points per game. If we can get to that 60 point threshold I see us being very good,” said Coach Fish.

WJLE will have a feature on the Tigers with a video interview of Coach John Sanders in a separate story Monday.

The 2019-20 DCHS Basketball Schedule is as follows:

(*) Denotes District Games

Tuesday, November 19: Van Buren County (Hall of Fame)- Away 6 p.m.
Saturday, November 23: Pickett County (Hall of Fame)- Home 6 p.m.
Monday, November 25: Warren County-Home 6 p.m.
Tuesday, November 26: White County-Away 6 p.m.
Friday, November 29: Red Boiling Springs-Home 6 p.m.

Friday, December 6: York Institute*-Home 6 p.m.
Tuesday, December 10: Livingston Academy*-Home 6 p.m.
Friday, December 13: Watertown*- Away 6 p.m.
Saturday, December 14: Cookeville- Away 6 p.m.
Tuesday, December 17: Warren County-Away 6 p.m.

Thursday, December 19: Watertown Boys Christmas Tournament- 8:30 p.m.
Friday, December 20: Watertown Boys Christmas Tournament- Watertown TBA
Saturday, December 21: Watertown Boys Christmas Tournament-Watertown TBA

Friday, December 27: Daytona Beach Shootout (Girls)-Daytona Beach, Florida TBA

Saturday, December 28: Daytona Beach Shootout (Girls)-Daytona Beach, Florida TBA
Monday, December 30: Daytona Beach Shootout (Girls)-Daytona Beach, Florida TBA

Saturday, January 4: Cookeville- Home 6 p.m.
Tuesday, January 7: White County- Home 6 p.m.
Friday, January 10: Cannon County*-Home 6 p.m.
Tuesday, January 14: Upperman*-Away 6 p.m.
Friday, January 17: Macon County*-Home 6 p.m.
Saturday, January 18: Red Boiling Springs- Away 6 p.m.

Tuesday, January 21: Smith County*-Home 6 p.m.
Friday, January 24: York Institute*-Away 6 p.m.
Tuesday, January 28: Livingston Academy*-Away 6 p.m.
Friday, January 31: Watertown*-Home 6 p.m.

Tuesday, February 4: Cannon County- Away 6 p.m.
Friday, February 7: Upperman- Home 6 p.m..
Tuesday, February 11: Macon County*-Away 6 p.m.
Thursday, February 13: Smith County*-Away 6 p.m.

November 17, 2019
By: Dwayne Page

Omega Apparel Incorporated was once a thriving garment factory in Smithville and the new company that has succeeded Omega hopes to make it flourish again.

620 Pelham, Inc. has begun operations in both buildings near downtown where Omega Apparel operated until recently deciding to go out of business after experiencing hard times.

The factory still produces Broadfall trousers for the US Navy although that contract is ending after the first of the year and it supplies three Goretex garments including pants and parkas under a sub-contract for the east Tennessee based Valley Apparel, LLC.

In a meeting Thursday, plant manager Amanda Callis and consultant Dick Chase, a former owner of Omega during its glory days, brought employees up to date on plans for the new industry. Chase also spoke with the local media afterwards.

With employment currently at just over 100, Chase said the factory plans to expand its commercial work and land more government contracts from the defense department for the US military and to eventually employ up to perhaps another 150 people. Hiring has already begun and anyone interested in a job can apply in person at the factory office on South Mountain Street.

“We need to get the labor pool started now in order to do some advanced training. We have just hired a half dozen people already to build on that Goretex line and when we get all the garments we are looking at doing we will probably have another 150 people,” said Chase.

“The word is back out that we are producing again and its just amazing what has happened. A buying group for the defense department is extremely interested in us getting up right away and we were contacted this morning (Thursday) about another company wanting us to do garments for them. They (defense department) have had some real difficulties because companies like Omega have gone out of business causing their supply chain to shrink. But now is a rebirth time for us (620 Pelham) to come back and do really spectacular things as before. Omega had an outstanding stellar reputation with the defense department and they depended on us for a lot of their production because we produced excellent quality work and did it fast. It was amazing how well we did it. We had some good structure to make it happen but it was all due to our employees,” continued Chase.

The California based company which owns 620 Pelham recently signed a two year lease including renewal options with the county industrial development board and the City of Smithville which owns the buildings where the factory operates. The company has 30 plus years of experience with operations in Mexico and Taiwan as well as the United States producing first quality sports apparel and other garments.

Why the name 620 Pelham?

“This is a name the owners started to incorporate for another opportunity. That didn’t work out but they still had the incorporation papers so they just applied that to this factory,” said Chase. The name is expected to eventually become 620 Pelham, Inc. DBA Omega USA.

Prior to Omega Apparel, the factory was owned by Tennessee Apparel. Chase and Brian Roberge bought the company in 1994 and started Omega.

“Tennessee Apparel started in 1988. I came to them in 1990 and worked for them until 1994 and they decided to go back to small business. Brian and I stepped up and bought it and the company became known as Omega Apparel in 1994,” said Chase.

Omega was still a successful company when Chase and Roberge sold it in 2012 and the ownership later changed again.

Although Chase and Roberge are not part of the new ownership team, they have been brought in as consultants for the new company.

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