(Photo provided) Zachary Farnsworth poses for a picture in 2024 before the Parkersburg South High School Homecoming during his junior year.

PARKERSBURG — Parkersburg South High School senior Zachary Farnsworth isn’t spending his final year of high school in a traditional classroom. Instead, he’s splitting his time between an intensive internship at Peoples Bank, a full slate of online college courses, and a busy schedule of sports, church and family life.

“I’m doing an internship at Peoples Bank where I’m rotating through the different departments just to gain exposure to all the different aspects of banking,” he said.

Farnsworth’s position at Peoples Bank’s main office in downtown Marietta is part of the Wood County Technical Center Work Skills and Training Program, a senior‒level co‒op that pairs students with employers. He said once you apply and have been accepted, you can approach a business to see if they would like to be part of the program.

“And so that’s what happened for me,” Farnsworth said. “I knew someone who worked at Peoples Bank, and they were able to get Peoples Bank to join the program. And so that let me work at Peoples Bank instead of going to school.”

He said the internship is structured around nine‒week rotations learning from different areas of the business world.

9Photo provided) Zachary Farnsworth at Camp Cowen in 2024. Farnsworth has attended Camp Cowen for many years and served as a camp counselor the past two summers.

“The first nine weeks, I did a rotation in the trust and investments department. Then for the second nine weeks, I went to the marketing department. And now I’m in insurance,” he said.

Farnsworth said this gives him real world experience and a potential leg up on his peers later.

“We have to work at least three hours every school day,” Farnsworth said. “It gives me valuable work experience, so that once I graduate from college, or even while I’m in college, I’ll be able to get a good job, because I’ll have work experience.”

He said trust and investments has been his favorite stop so far.

“I got to look at and analyze different stocks and investments and just help advisers rebalance their clients’ portfolios,” he said. “And it was a lot of fun.”

(Photo provided) Zachary Farnsworth poses for a picture at the New York Stock Exchange in July 2024.

He said he saw the value of long‒term, diversified investing which coincided with his own beliefs.

“They believe the same thing I do, that you should invest for the long-term,” Farnsworth said. “That it’s not about short-term trading and really trying to play the stock market as much, but more about having a diversified portfolio. … For the average person, it’s definitely best to have index funds or mutual funds … because then you get exposure to hundreds of different companies across a variety of different industries, and so you’re not overly exposed to one company or one sector of the market.”

In the marketing department, Farnsworth said he was introduced to brand strategy and customer perception.

“That was actually really fun, and it was kind of a little bit of a culture shock, because I was used to working with a lot of the older demographic when I was in trust and investments, and marketing was a lot of younger people like me,” he said. “I got to learn more about marketing and just about how you really want to shape the image of your brand … so that when people hear the name of your company, they think good things and not bad things.”

He said his work there ranged from review tracking to competitive research.

(Photos provided) Zachary Farnsworth has been a striker on the Parkersburg South High School soccer team his entire high school career and served as the varsity team captain his senior year.

“I went through all of our Google review ratings … kept track of what our current star rating was at each location, and then I did research for our website too, going around a competitor’s website, seeing what they had that was different, and then trying to see how we can improve ours.”

Farnsworth has now moved into insurance where he said he’s helping to modernize operations.

“They’re gonna start digitizing a lot of their stuff, a lot of their old files,” he said. “So right now, they have a lot of old files that they store on paper, and I’m going to be uploading them online … so they can have them in a better organized spot. So they can access them anywhere, and not just have them sitting in the file room.”

He said one task he just finished was going through a few thousand policies and changing the pay structure on them.

“Just making sure all the policies are accurate and people are getting the commissions they’re supposed to get,” he said.

(Photos provided) Zachary Farnsworth has been a striker on the Parkersburg South High School soccer team his entire high school career and served as the varsity team captain his senior year.

He admits things can get repetitive, but says the experience has taught him how to stay focused and learn as much as he can. He said it also taught him he could find ways to distract his mind while still staying on task.

” I realized I could listen to music or listen to a podcast and still get it done. … I was more productive when I was listening to something else,” he said.

Farnsworth’s next stop will likely bring him even deeper into credit and lending as he goes to the commercial credit department.

“In that department, I’d learn about how they underwrite loans, how they try to get more business and specifically business loans,” he said. “Since I’ve taken some accounting classes, I could just kind of put that to practice and be like, OK, they bring in this much money, and they have this much in expenses, they should be able to cover the loan, or they shouldn’t be able to cover their loan.”

His choices now have him on a fast path through college thanks to his dual‒credit workload, and he already has a clear plan for life after graduation. He said he will attend Marshall University where he will pursue a degree in finance.

(Photo provided) Zachary Farnsworth poses for a picture with Hannah Raper before the 2025 Parkersburg South High School homecoming.

“I’m considering double majoring in either economics or maybe management information systems,” he said. “I’m kind of up in the air on the other stuff, but finance will definitely be one of them.”

His interest in Marshall began during a two‒week Governor’s School of Entrepreneurship camp he attended there in 10th grade. It’s a 10-day residential summer program for ninth-through-11th-grade students that immerses them in entrepreneurship through hands-on problem-solving, startup creation, industry mentorship and pitching ideas, designed to foster innovation and business skills, according to the West Virginia Department of Education.

He said he was impressed by the new business school and especially by Marshall’s president, Brad D. Smith, whose commitment to improving West Virginia and Huntington strongly influenced his choice. He said he met Smith and found him knowledgeable, connected and down to earth.

“I was there for that, and I got to meet with professors, and I got to see their brand new business school and learn about their president … he’s really trying to make the state great again, and trying to bring investment back to the state and back to Huntington.”

Because he has packed his high school years with AP and dual‒enrollment courses, he expects to finish his degree far earlier than most.

“I should be able to graduate in under two years,” he said.

He said he sees himself building a career in investments and the stock market, likely outside West Virginia at first.

“I do plan to move away for a time,” Farnsworth said. “I might come back, but I do want to go and explore a little bit and live in a bigger city.”

He’s already circled Charlotte, N.C., as his ideal destination.

“Because it’s a big finance hub. So that would give me a lot of different opportunities,” he said.

Outside of his internship at the bank and the virtual classroom, Farnsworth has been a multi-sport athlete at South, playing tennis and soccer all four years. He served as the senior captain for the soccer team this year.

“That was a very challenging time of the year, because I had the job at the bank, and then I had five college classes, and then I had soccer,” he said.

The season had both good times and bad times.

“We didn’t do fantastic, but we got a lot better throughout the season,” he said. “We didn’t start off the season great, but in our last game of the season, we played one of the best teams in the state, and we held them to no points for a long time.”

What stuck with him most was the mindset soccer taught that he should never give up.

“Whenever we really focused and we actually tried instead of just giving up, our team did a lot better than we had ever thought we could do,” he said. “That just really gives us a lot of support and encouragement for when we go through tough things in life … it never gets any easier if you just stop … we’re always going to have to work through hard things.”

He said one of his biggest supporters in his busy life is his church and youth group at Vienna Baptist Church.

He describes the group as both a spiritual anchor and a social support system

“We meet on Sundays,” he said. “We talk about what we learned at the service, or we talk about a different area of the Bible. … Sunday night, we have a youth worship night … we play games together, read the Bible some and participate in worship together. … It’s a good time to hang out with my friends.”

He said his time at church is what keeps him going in life.

“That’s also been probably the biggest help whenever I’m trying to manage all this different stuff,” he said. “Believing in something bigger than myself. Because whenever things seem really busy and like it’s just never going to end, I know that eventually it will, and I know that I’m not doing it alone.”

When asked if he has a mantra or saying he tries to live by, Farnsworth referred to Proverbs 9:10.

“It says, ‘The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and knowledge of the Holy One brings understanding.’ And so what that means is people who fear the Lord follow what he says to do in the Bible,” he said. “That they’re going to have true wisdom … and then it says … knowledge of the Holy One brings understanding; they’re going to understand why the world is the way it is. So there are going to be things that don’t make sense until you truly come to know God.”

For a student who spends his days balancing spreadsheets, stock research, soccer practices, and scripture, that search for wisdom and understanding seems to be at the heart of everything he does.

(Photo provided) Zachary Farnsworth, second from right, poses for a picture with all of the seniors on the 2025 Parkersburg South High School boys soccer team.

(Photo provided) Zachary Farnsworth attends the 2024 Governor’s School of Entrepreneurship at Marshall University.

(Photo provided) Zachary Farnsworth attends the 2022 West Virginia Governor’s STEM Institute at Greenbank Observatory.

(Photo provided) Zachary Farnsworth was one of the five elected Supreme Court justices at the 2025 Mountaineer Boys State Leadership Academy.

(Photo provided) Zachary Farnsworth is part of the Parkersburg South High School tennis team.

(Photo provided) Zachary Farnsworth, far right, on a vacation with his family at Hunting Island State Park, S.C., in July.

(Photo provided) Zachary Farnsworth visits Marshall University in 2024. Farnsworth plans to attend the university this fall after graduation and pursue a degree in finance.