Mortgage Broker in Berea, SC

High school football in South Carolina kicked off last week with Week 0, but all the teams are in action Friday for Week 1 of the 2023 regular season. Upstate teams gearing up for their openers include Westside, Southside, Mauldin, Easley, Belton-Honea Path, Berea, Landrum, Dixie, Crescent, Pendleton and Spartanburg Christian. Kickoffs are 7:30 p.m. unless otherwise noted.

Week 1 schedule for Aug. 25

Abbeville (1-0) at Powdersville (0-1)

Berea (0-0) at Landrum (0-0)

Boiling Springs (0-1) at Mauldin (0-0)

Byrnes (1-0) at Chapman (1-0)

Carolina (N.C.) Academy (0-0) at Southside Christian (0-1)

Chesnee (1-0) at Broome (1-0), 8 p.m.

Dixie (0-0) at Crescent (1-0)

Easley (0-0) at Daniel (1-0)

Eastside (0-1) at Pendleton (0-0), 8 p.m.

Fountain Inn (1-0) at Woodruff (0-1)

Greenville (1-0) at T.L. Hanna (1-0)

TOP GAMES, PREDICTIONS:SC high school football predictions in Upstate for Week 1

BIG-PLAY BENNETT:South Carolina commit Mazeo Bennett leads Greenville past Dorman

Top performers in Week 0: Greenville County | Spartanburg County | Anderson and Pickens counties

Greer (0-1) at Hillcrest (1-0)

Liberty (1-0) at Blue Ridge (0-1)

North Augusta (1-0) at Dorman (0-1), 8 p.m.

Pickens (0-1) at Franklin County (Georgia) (0-1)

Riverside (1-0) at J.L. Mann (1-0)

St. Joseph's Catholic (1-0) at Blacksburg (1-0), 8 p.m.

Southside (0-0) at Christ Church Episcopal (0-1)

Spartanburg (0-1) at Dutch Fork (0-0), 8 p.m.

TOUGH LOSS:Spartanburg football rally falls short against South Pointe

864Huddle's Dandy Dozen series: No. 12 Knai Cook | No. 11 Jayden Wilson-Abrams | No. 10 Avery McFadden | No. 9 Joshua Williams | No. 8 Steven O'Dell | No. 7 Jimmar Boston | No. 6 Watson Young | No. 5 Julius Tate | No. 4 Dashun Reeder | No. 3 Marcus Downs | No. 2 Blake Franks | No. 1 Mazeo Bennett

Spartanburg Christian (0-0) at Whitmire (0-1)

Travelers Rest (0-1) at Wade Hampton (0-1)

Union County (0-1) at Gaffney (0-1), 8 p.m.

Walhalla (0-0) at Woodmont (1-0)

West-Oak (0-1) at Carolina (0-1)

Westside (0-0) at Belton-Honea Path (0-0)

GREENVILLE, S.C. (FOX Carolina) - Caught on camera! One Upstate woman said Black bears keep showing up on her property.

Linda Chambers lives in Berea. She tells Fox Carolina News, bear sightings started this time last summer. Chambers has lived in her home for almost 20 years and has never been afraid of going outside until now.

“It’s terrifying, I’m 75 years old or will be, where in the world would I go? I can’t run from one. I used to walk up and check our mail cause it’s up on the road, and I would walk up there and check it and come back. But now I’m too scared to even walk up the driveway during the day.”

In the security video from her property, you can see a young bear coming up to her door, down her porch, and leaving behind a big mess. She said the bears come out at various times of the day, and it makes her scared to go outside, even if it’s just to walk her dog.

“I opened the door this morning and my porch it was torn to pieces,” said Chambers. “My chair was overturned, my bird seed in that can was everywhere the flowers were knocked over like they were trying to eat them or something I don’t know. I’m terrified.”

The Department of Natural Resources tells us that bear sightings are common around Spring and Summer. They said bears are looking for food and it’s important to be “Bear Wise.”

According to DNR’s website:

To help South Carolina residents better coexist with bears, Waldrop and the BearWise program offer these “Six At-Home BearWise Basics.”

While people may be excited about seeing a bear, SCDNR wants them to remember that bears are wild animals and should be respected. Black bears are usually shy, evasive, and non-aggressive toward people. People and black bears can live in the same area with little conflict by following some basic rules. For more information on living responsibly with

Copyright 2023 WHNS. All rights reserved.

GREENVILLE COUNTY, S.C. —

According to a Furman University study published this year, Greenville County needs around 20,000 affordable housing units. That's housing the workforce can afford, costing less than the market rate.

This year, Greenville County Council is keeping affordable workforce housing a priority. They've allocated $13.4 million to Greenville Housing Authority and are offering 50% property tax cut incentives for 20 years to developers who set aside 20% of their units as affordable housing.

"It doesn't come out of the county's budget. It doesn't take away any of the services people have paid taxes for in the county. It's a net gain," Butch Kirven, Greenville County Chairman Pro-tem, said.

However, not all council members agree on using that tax break at Cherokee Landing. The 128-unit Berea apartment complex is under construction and already received funding from HUD.

Usually, those units are subject to certain rules, including that all of their units must be affordable for those making 60% of the average median income.

Councilman Benton Blount said he'd rather use that new tax base than forgive half.

"And the concern of my constituency was the increase in property taxes. So any way we can maintain revenue from any kind of development, it goes to hopefully offset those concerns," he said.

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Blount said another worry is whether offering this will encourage irresponsible growth.

"They even said in finance we have a dozen of the projects waiting coming down the pipeline," Blount said. "And as soon as we pass this through, all of those developers are going to see a green light to come to the county and get a tax break for 20 years."

While Kirven said it's hard to control growth, affordable housing is one way to grow strategically.

"If you have housing in the urban areas, it reduces the pressure of people moving farther out into the sprawl areas, which creates a lot more traffic congestion, and where the roads and infrastructure is inadequate to support that," he said.

Tuesday is just the first reading. Councilmembers say there won't be any debate or vote. That comes in two weeks on Oct. 17.

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."

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dskeeler@greenvillenews.com

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.