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When thinking about his former quarterback and coaching assistant Dean Batson, Berea High football coach Wayne Green said he had a tremendous amount respect for Batson "as a player, coach and a person." Green visited Batson on Friday, a day before Batson passed away after a long battle with kidney cancer.

Batson, 47, was diagnosed with stage 4 renal cell carcinoma in 2008. A memorial service will be held Wednesday at 1 p.m. at Berea First Baptist Church with visitation following in the church sanctuary.

Batson was a head coach of football and baseball at Berea, where he was also a special education and driver's education teacher. After resigning from his alma mater in 2008, Batson went on to serve as the Revenue Facilities Manager for Greenville County Parks, Recreation and Tourism. He was the manager of Otter Creek Water Park.

On Greenville County Rec's Facebook page, a post stated that the department was "grieving the loss of one of its own."

The post continued, "Walking through Otter Creek, you see his "fingerprints" throughout the park – and you can almost still feel his presence there. But Dean didn't simply leave his fingerprints on our water park; with his quiet, gracious, and unassuming manner, he indelibly touched each person with whom his own his life intertwined – his family and friends, his students during his teaching/coaching years, his Otter Creek staff, the park visitors, and his Rec coworkers. He was known and loved for his nurturing and mentoring style of leadership. Dean had this extraordinary ability to see and bring out the best in people – and he has left an incredible legacy because of the way he chose to live his life and because of the many lives he has touched and influenced."

Greenville Rec announced that Otter Park will be closed Wednesday to honor Batson's passing and allow staff to attend the memorial service.

Batson, who was a member of Pelham Road Baptist Church, grew up in Greenville with a strong family presence at Berea High. The school's football stadium is named after Batson's father Harold, who coached football, baseball, basketball, golf and was assistant principal and principal at Berea.

After graduating from Berea in 1987, Dean Batson went on to the University of South Carolina before earning his Master's degree in Education from Converse College. After college, Batson began coaching and teaching at Berea High. He coached the football team's running backs for 12 years before taking over as head coach nine days before the 2003 football season began.

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"Dean was a quarterback in every way. He was a consummate leader," said Green, who first tenure as Berea's coach began with Batson's senior year. "He had such strong character and was such a strong competitor.

"When I had the opportunity to hire him as a coach, I jumped at it. That was just because if I could get our guys to compete with the same tenacity and not quit as Dean did, I knew we were going to have some good teams."

A few years after Batson's cancer diagnosis, a 25-mile bicycle ride was held as a benefit for his family. The Dean Batson Legacy Ride began in 2011 to raise money for kidney cancer research and a college fund for Batson's two children, Emily and Parks. That event soon became Dean Batson Legacy Events, which included annual fundraisers such as a 5K and 10K run and a golf tournament.

Green recalled that Batson did not have overly tremendous skills at any of the three sports he played at Berea. Green said other factors made Batson successful.

"The thing that made him such a special player was the attitude that he played with and the way he made people around him better," Green said. "This was a very special young man."

In lieu of flowers, memorials may be made to Pelham Road Baptist Church, 1108 Pelham Road, Greenville, SC 29615 or to the Dean Batson Legacy Event at any Wells Fargo Bank location.

Condolences may be sent to the family at www.thomasmcafee.com.

Correction: This article has been updated to clarify the rent isn't subsidized according to income. The developer obtained tax credits from state and federal sources, and leveraged those to offset project costs, which allow it to charge below market rents to qualifying residents.

The Sullivan, a new apartment complex in Berea, aims to address affordable housing needs in Greenville County. The apartments are reserved for households earning 60 percent of the area median income, about $51,000, or less.

As previously reported by The Greenville News, the area needs approximately 20,000 more units of low-cost housing, according to a coalition of housing groups in the city and county.

Holly Douglas, a principal on the development team, acknowledged the need for affordable housing in the area.

"Wages for many jobs are not keeping pace with housing prices and supply for rental homes at this price point are greatly lagging demand here," Douglas said. "An absence of quality affordable housing solutions impacts everyone, not just those that need a place to live. We're excited to be a part of the solution in developing this neighborhood and working closely with our partners to bring The Sullivan to life."

The apartment complex, located at 6001 Jacks Lookout Road, has 180 apartments in five buildings. There are one, two, three and four-bedroom options available.

The Sullivan is a combined effort of Schaumber Development, Holliday Development and Douglas Development. The project was financed through investment from RBC Capital Markets, JP Morgan Chase, Stifel, Prudential and Community Works and low-income housing tax credits.

Amenities at the Sullivan include an onsite laundry facility, a pool, a playground, fitness center and a dog park. Douglas said the Sullivan is designed as a quality solution and showplace of how a high-quality affordable development can be integrated within a community.

"We are continuously challenging stereotypes about what affordable housing looks and feels like," Douglas said.

The Sullivan began accepting its first residents April 24. Information is available by calling the leasing office at 864-987-8133 or by e-mail at sullivan@nhe-inc.com.

Royale Bonds covers issues and topics related to affordable housing for the Greenville News. Reach her via email at rbonds@gannett.com.

The South Carolina High School League announced Dec. 17 its proposal for realignment -- a shakeup that determines the region and classification for each team competing in the SCHSL. Realignment occurs every two years.

The SCHSL uses each school's enrollment in grades 9 through 11 on the 45th day of the school to determine its classification. In the current proposal, the 36 schools with the largest enrollment would be placed in Class AAAAA; the next 41 were placed in AAAA, 43 in AAA, 44 in Class AA and 55 in A.

There are opportunities for a school to appeal its proposed placement to the SCHSL. The first occurred this week; others occur Feb. 9 and Feb. 16 before realignment is finalized Feb. 22.

On Monday morning, Berea High athletic director Andrew Chisholm and principal Mike Noel appealed the Bulldogs' proposed placement in Class AAAA to the Class AAAA and AAA executive committees.

The Bulldogs, who have competed in Class AAA for the past two years, are proposed to head back up tp AAAA, the classification they competed in during the 2018-19 and 2019-20 seasons.

"If you take a look at our financial situation as well as the students that come to us that, for lack of a better word, are not going to be able to participate," Noel said during the appeal to the AAA executive committee, "then we should be in AAA."

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The Class AAAA executive committee voted 5-4 against allowing Berea to remain in Class AAA; the Class AAA executive committee voted 6-3 in favor of Berea. Both committees have to vote in favor for the appeal to be approved, so the appeal now goes to the Feb. 9 appeal date, where Chisholm and Noel will again appeal their proposed placement in AAAA.

Berea appealed the proposed placement in Region 1-AAAA and hopes to be placed in Region 3-AAA with Blue Ridge, Broome, Carolina, Chapman and Travelers Rest.

Berea is the only school in Greenville County among the seven that are proposed to move classifications that would placed in a higher classification by the SCHSL.

In its letter of appeal, Berea stated that, "Berea High School sits at the center of a multiculturally diverse community. Many factors in the surrounding community skew an accurate count of the real time enrollment of Berea High School."

That statement is key to Berea's appeal. According to a copy of the appeal filed to the SCHSL, Berea's 45th-day enrollment count was 1,025, a total that deems the school large enough to be placed in Class AAAA, but barely. Another Greenville County school, Travelers Rest, has an enrollment count of 976 -- 49 fewer students than Berea in grades 9 through 11 -- but Travelers Rest is proposed to moved down from AAAA to AAA next fall.

Noel and Chisholm argued to the AAA and AAAA executive committees that Berea should be placed in AAA, too. The main reason being the makeup of its community and its impact on enrollment. According to the letter, "121 students included in our 45th day count ... are not eligible to participate in athletics in the next realignment."

Those 121 students would put Berea's 45th-day count below that of Travelers Rest. According to the filing, the high school has experienced the withdrawal of 283 students since Aug. 17, 2021 – the first day of school – while enrolling 192 since the start.

"Our uniqueness skews our numbers," Chisholm said during the appeal to AAA Executive Committee.

That uniqueness includes two programs and two types of students who attend the school that make up the 121 students that are ineligible to compete in athletics.

The school has 15 students with intellectual and physical disabilities, that "do not possess the mental or physical abilities to compete in athletics," according to the filing. There are 37 students in Berea's Newcomer Program that is for "for new immigrant children to enroll in public school," who do not have the proper education background or paperwork to be eligible to compete in athletics, according to the appeal filing.

There were 21 students who graduated early in 2020 and 48 who are in their fourth or fifth year at Berea but not on the grade levels that were counted as 9th- through 11th- graders on the 45-day count provided to the SCHSL.

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The SCHSL has not publicly announced the cutoff numbers for each classification and did not respond to an email and voicemails requesting specific numbers as of Thur. Berea's appeal filing states that their 45-day count "is only 49.17 students above the cutoff line between AAA and AAAA."

If Berea's appeal is denied Feb. 9 by the overall SCHSL executive committee and again on Feb. 16 by the SCHSL appellate panel, the Bulldogs will be one of the smallest schools competing in AAAA.

The filing also cites the immense struggles of Berea High's athletic teams while competing in AAAA. The boys soccer program at the school has been highly competitive for several years. Berea's boys soccer team won state titles in Class AAA in 2017 and 2018.

"Traditionally, my last point is, we struggle every time we're placed in AAAA," Chisholm said during Berea's presentation to the Class AAA Executive Committee. The SCHSL has not said it takes competition into account while realigning regions and classifications.

Joe Dandron covers high school sports for The Greenville News. Contact him at jdandron@gannett.com and follow him on Twitter: @JoeMDandron. You can send in scores, stats and story tips to 864Huddle@gannett.com.

Ever since playing his college football at North Greenville University, a return to Greenville County has been on Andrew Chisholm’s mind.

On Wednesday at Berea High School, the return became a reality.

At the high school’s faculty meeting, Chisholm was introduced as Berea’s new athletic director. He had spent the past 12 years as an assistant and then, beginning in 2013, a head football coach at Blacksburg. He also had stops at Wren and T.L. Hanna.

He played football for North Greenville from 1995 to 1999 and said he always felt at home in Greenville County. The Chesterfield County native and McBee alum knew coming back one day would be a possibility.

“There must be something in the water, because I’ve had it in the back of my head for years when I left after graduating. It’s good to come full circle that way,” he said.

The attraction was not only to Berea, but also working in the largest school district in the state, the Greenville County School District.

“If you’re going to do things on a big scale, why not do it in an opportunistic place like this?” he said. “There’s a lot of good sports teams in Greenville County, and I want some of them to be wearing Berea Bulldogs on the front of their jerseys.”

Although he said it was hard to leave Blacksburg, the opportunity to be involved in the community at Berea was too good to pass up.

“I think the raw material is here. It seems like a school where the people like each other, that’s easy to see when walking up and down the halls,” he said. “The teachers care about the students; the students know they are cared for, and when you have those things ... you do things right and when you work hard the winning takes care of itself.”

Berea’s athletic department underwent changes last October, former athletic director Jeff Maness resigned for personal reasons and football coach Julius Prince was suspended following a driving under the influence charge.

Chisholm said he didn’t know the status of any sport and that his first job as athletic director will be to evaluate where each program stands.

He said during his experience at Hanna, Wren and Blacksburg he has had to navigate changes in the athletic departments, which makes him feel he is equipped for Berea.

"Each school's been a rebuild in its own right," Chisholm said. "I feel like it's it a good fit for me here because they're looking for a kind of rebirth in the athletic department and I've been a part of that several times."

In the big picture, he said he hopes to be someone the coaches at Berea can lean on.

“I’m here as a resource to the coaches,” he said. “A lot of times the athletic director is in a position to coach the coaches and make sure everyone is in the right place and everyone has a grasp of the common vision.”

If that’s accomplished, he thinks that can make Berea not only a good example to the Berea community but to Greenville County.

“We want to be first class and do things the right way, and eventually we want to be trend-setters in everything we do,” he said. We want people to call Berea High School and ask what we’re doing, because whatever we’re doing is working.”

POWDERSVILLE — When Kandi Jennings planned a weekday lunch with husband Harold, she anticipated a drive to Laurens, where he was working that day.

"He said he'd drive to Powdersville to meet," Jennings said as she waited for a table at The Big Clock on S.C. 153 Monday. "He wanted to eat here."

Jennings, a hair stylist at the Head Games Hair Salon in Powdersville, was only mildly surprised. She and her husband have eaten three times at the area's newest meat-and-three diner, already one of their favorite spots.

The Jennings aren't alone. Although the diner is only six weeks old, Stelios Katsamperis and his family are serving an average of 600 lunches a day in the 180-seat eatery near the increasingly busy corner of S.C. 81 and S.C. 153.

"It's a lot more than we expected, this soon," said Katsamperis, 39, who works the front of the diner while his mother, Yanna, and brother, Nick, 37, lead the cooking brigade in the rear. "We're getting four food deliveries a week, and the vendors tell us we've ordered more food than anyone else in the Upstate in the last two weeks."

The surge has created growing problems that diners rarely encounter in their infancy.

The Katsamperis family, which operates a smaller diner by the same name in the Berea area, where Ken Katsamperis, 34, continues to lead the kitchen staff, anticipated more elbow room when it purchased the former Sonny's Barbecue location. But the demand for a larger staff has more than offset the increase in square footage.

"As we remodeled, we thought we had a big kitchen, big cooler and lots of space everywhere," Katsamperis said. "But we have 15 staff people working in the back (kitchen) and 15 out front, and usually more than that on weekends. So now, it's not so big."

Katsamperis had "about 80" employees on the staff as the week began. As the large sign facing S.C. 153 proclaims, on the edge of an often-crowded parking lot, he hopes to add more.

While his family has been surprised by the immediate success, Katsamperis had no doubts about the long-term potential in the Upstate's fastest-growing area.

When the family purchased the Berea Big Clock in 2010, all its members lived in Powdersville near S.C. 153, which, at the time, had far fewer than the 32,000 vehicles that travel it daily now.

"Every morning, we'd drive by here, and say, 'that's the perfect spot,'" Katsamperis said Monday, after making an emergency run to a food vendor. "We talked about it almost every time we drove to Berea."

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The family eventually relocated their residences to Greenville, and after three successful years at Berea, the brothers decided to expand. They asked a real-estate agent to research a setting for the second Big Clock, and in July 2016 an ideal location was found. Closing on the property was scheduled on a Thursday morning.

At 11:35 p.m. on the night before the scheduled transaction, a friend called Katsamperis to inform that the Sonny's Barbecue location was on the market.

"We gave them a check the next day," Katsamperis said.

A key to the instant success, Katsamperis believes, is a wide variety on the menu. The meat-and-3 choices include 16 meats and 26 sides, and the rest of the menu crosses the American-dish board.

Another unlikely twist seems to have accelerated sales volume. Renovations (which included a fireplace, three wide-screen TVs and a 180-seat dining room that features craftsman-style trim and license-plate nostalgia decor), were completed in March. That gave Katsamperis a few days to build a staff, some of it from the Berea diner.

Opening day was scheduled for April 6. A free night of dining for friends and family was scheduled for the evening of April 5, as part of a trial run in a new kitchen.

But when a severe thunderstorm hit Powdersville early in the evening of April 5, he was left with plenty of food and but an empty dining room.

"At 7:30, I flipped the "Open" sign on," and by 8 o'clock we had a full house," said Katsamperis, who provided free food for those who wandered in. "The next day, at noon, the parking lot was full. First-day sales were way, way way more than we expected."

Forty days into the project, little has changed.

"It's pretty common for restaurants to have a bit of a honeymoon, and then it drops off," one vendor said. "But they're not seeing any dropoff. Their deliveries are increasing."

Follow Abe Hardesty on Twitter @abe_hardesty