The Hub City Spartanburgers will take the field in their first alternate uniforms and
identity as the Spartan Regiment. Hub City Spartanburgers photo
Hub City Spartanburgers unveil Spartan Regiment identity honoring Revolutionary War roots
By Bobby Dailey Jr. for The Spartan Weekly News
SPARTANBURG,
S.C. — The Hub City Spartanburgers are honoring the Upstate’s Revolutionary War history with their first alternate
identity, the Spartan Regiment, paying tribute to the militia that gave Spartanburg its name.
The
identity arrives as the nation approaches its 250th anniversary in 2026 and reflects a partnership between the Spartanburgers
and Spartanburg Community College to recognize the region’s military heritage and service members.
The Spartan Regiment uniforms will debut May 23. Hub City will wear the uniforms for three games in 2026, with enhanced
ticket discounts offered to active-duty and retired military members for each game.
The original
Spartan Regiment was formed in 1775, when colonial resistance to British rule was still controversial.
Comprised of about 250 soldiers, the unit fought in one of the most active theaters of the Revolutionary War
and played a key role in Patriot victories, including the Battle of Cowpens in 1781. Spartanburg County was established four
years later and named for the regiment.
“America’s 250th anniversary is the perfect
time to honor Spartanburg’s rich military history,” said Tyson Jeffers, general manager of the Spartanburgers.
“The brave men of the Spartan Regiment are the reason we enjoy our freedoms today. We’re excited to share their
stories while also celebrating today’s veterans and active military members.”
The
uniform design draws inspiration from the historic Spartan Regiment flag, first exhibited at the Museum of the American Revolution
in 2023. The flag is owned by the Spartanburg County Public Library and is undergoing restoration. The uniforms feature similar
colors and lettering, along with 13 bars on the sleeves symbolizing the original colonies. An interlocking “SR”
on the cap represents the unity of the regiment.
“The Spartan Regiment played a pivotal
role in our country’s fight for freedom,” said R. Todd Stephens, Spartanburg County librarian. “The library
is excited to partner with the Spartanburgers to share that history through baseball.”
The
Spartanburgers will wear the uniforms May 23-24 and Aug. 2. On May 23, Fifth Third Park will host a Revolutionary War-themed
experience highlighting daily life during the era. A Memorial Day celebration honoring fallen service members is scheduled
for May 24, followed by a postgame fireworks show. On Aug. 2, Spartan-burg Community College and the team will unveil a replica
Spartan Regiment flag before the game.
“Spartanburg Commu-nity College is proud to partner
on an identity that honors the courage and sacrifice that shaped our community and our nation,” said G. Michael Mikota,
SCC president. “This initiative reflects our commitment to honoring military service and educating the community about
Spartanburg’s history.”
An enhanced military discount will be available for all three
Spartan Regiment games. Tickets for the Aug. 2 game will also be tax-free, with ticketing taxes waived. SCC serves as the
presenting sponsor of the team’s Veteran of the Game program.
Tickets for Spartan Regiment
games are on sale at HubCitySpartanburgers.com or by phone at 864-594-0701. The team’s full promotional schedule has
been released, with single-game tickets available beginning Jan. 20.
Zaxby’s
opens new Landrum location on Highway 14, plans February 18 ribbon cutting
Zaxby’s has opened
a new restaurant in Landrum, expanding the chicken chain’s footprint in the Upstate.
The
restaurant is located at 1820 S.C. 14 and began serving customers through dine-in and drive-thru service on Monday, Jan. 19.
A grand opening celebration and ribbon-cutting ceremony is scheduled for Wednesday, Feb. 18. The ribbon cutting will take
place at 9 a.m., followed by a customer celebration and promotional giveaways from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m.
The
Landrum location is owned and operated by Avants Enterprise LLC, a division of Avants Management Group.
“South Carolina has long embraced our family-owned Zaxby’s, and we’re truly grateful,” said
Melissa Crowe, president of Avants Management Group. “With three locations in nearby Spartan-burg, expanding into Landrum
is a natural next step in strengthening our roots in the Upstate. We look forward to building meaningful local partnerships
and serving the Landrum community.”
The 3,406-square-foot restaurant includes seating for
58 guests and a drive-thru. The building features the brand’s modern farmhouse design, incorporating signature colors,
logos and sauce-themed artwork. Customers can also order ahead through the Zaxby’s website or mobile app, with delivery
available through the app and third-party services including DoorDash, Grubhub and Uber Eats.
Zaxby’s
menu includes made-to-order chicken fingers and wings with a variety of sauces, along with items such as chicken bacon ranch
loaded fries and fried pickles. The chain is also offering limited-time Asian Zensation menu items, including a giant wrap
and a sweet Asian glazed chicken finger plate.
The Landrum restaurant is the company’s fourth
Zaxby’s location in South Carolina and joins a total of 32 locations operated by Avants Management Group across six
states.
Crowe said the new restaurant will create more than 60 jobs in the area, with opportunities
for advancement. Applicants may apply online or visit the restaurant to inquire about open positions.
Hub City
Spartanburgers name new manager, staff for 2026 season
By Bobby Dailey Jr. for The Spartan
Weekly News
The Texas Rangers organization recently announced
their minor league coordinators and coaching staffs for the 2026 season, bringing new leadership to Spartan-burg ahead of
the Hub City Spartanburgers’ second year of play.
Carlos Maldonado will manage the Spartanburg-ers
in 2026, marking his first season at the helm in Hub City and his seventh season as a manager in the Rangers organization.
Former manager Chad Comer was among four members of the 2025 South Atlantic League South Division championship staff promoted
to Double-A Frisco.
Bryce Gist will remain with the Spartanburgers as strength and conditioning
coach, while Pete Stasio returns for his second season in Spartanburg as clubhouse manager.
Mason
Milkey will serve as pitching coach in his fourth season with the Rangers organization and first with Hub City. He held the
same role with the Arizona Complex League Rangers in 2025.
Brian Pozos joins the staff as hitting
coach, advancing to the High-A level for the first time in his five-year tenure with Texas. He previously served as a hitting
coach at the Single-A level from 2023-25 and with the ACL Rangers in 2022.
The Spartanburgers
will also feature two development coaches. Jorge Cortes returns after serving in the same role with Hickory in 2025, while
Landon Lassiter joins the organization after coaching in the Baltimore Orioles’ minor league system from 2023-25.
Dakota Fowee enters his second season with the Rangers as athletic trainer after working with the ACL Rangers in
2025. He previously held positions with the Atlanta Braves and Boston Red Sox organizations.
Gist,
who returns for his second season with Hub City, has local ties after serving as a graduate assistant at Clemson University.
Stasio returns for his fifth season with the Rangers’ High-A affiliates and was named the 2024 South Atlantic League
Clubhouse Manager of the Year during his final season in Hickory.
The Spartanburgers are coming
off a successful inaugural season in which the club captured the South Atlantic League South Division title. The team will
open its 2026 home schedule this spring at Fifth Third Park, continuing its affiliation with the Texas Rangers.
LTC Jason Pike
A life of courage—LTC
Jason Pike calls Spartanburg home
Meet Your Neighbor is a weekly feature by Spartan
Weekly News writer Grace Anne Johnson. If you’d like to be featured, or know someone that would be a great candidate
to be featured, please email us at [email protected] or call 864.574.1360.
***
Spartanburg native Lieutenant Colonel (LTC) Jason Pike has lived a storied life of courage, honor, and resilience
— and now he’s making it his mission to share the lessons he’s learned.
The
early years of LTC Pike’s life weren’t easy. In early elementary school, he was diagnosed with an acute learning
disability and failed the first grade, putting him a year behind the rest of his peers. Several years later, he was diagnosed
with osteo-myelitis, a crippling bone disease that was dissolving the bone of his knee, adding physical challenges onto the
academic challenges he already faced.
As a teenager, it didn’t seem as though there
were many options on the table for him. A school counselor told him not to bother with college, and his personal expectations
were set low. “I figured I’d probably work at McDonald’s,” he said. “You just hoped you’d
get a job and stay out of trouble.”
However, LTC Pike was raised by a father who had
grown up in the depths of poverty and drilled into him the importance of hard work and determination.
“He would tell me, ‘You’re so much better off than I was,’” LTC Pike recalled. “‘You’ve
just got to keep working harder.’”
Because he was a year behind in school, LTC
Pike was only in his junior year of high school when he joined the National Guard at age seventeen. At the time, he says,
he didn’t have much confidence in himself to do anything, but the National Guard felt like a safe enough entry point.
What he didn’t expect was how this simple decision would be the beginning of the rest of his life. LTC Pike
attended basic training between 11th and 12th grade, then attended junior college and was ROTC before finally enrolling at
Clemson University on an ROTC scholarship. All around him, people were shocked to see the student who had always struggled
through school attending college on a scholarship, but it was simply the first of many times that his hard-built determination
would show itself.
After graduating from Clemson, he left the ROTC and rejoined the National
Guard — this time as an officer. Once again, this was a shock to those around him. “At the time, it was really
unusual for someone to go from enlisted to officer,” explained LTC Pike. “It would be like going from a roofer
to becoming the supervisor of the neighborhood. It just doesn’t happen.”
Several
years later, he was picked up for active duty and began what would be over two decades of traveling the world serving in the
military. His time in the service took him to Korea, Germany, Afghanistan, El Salvador, and Canada.
In total, LTC Pike spent thirty-one years in the military, where he earned over 30 different badges, awards, and
service ribbons, including the Bronze Star, which was earned for actions during his service in Afghanistan. And while he may
have grown up as the boy who struggled through school, he completed over 25 formal military schools — something no one
would have thought possible all those years ago.
Upon retiring from the military as a lieutenant
colonel, LTC Pike was faced with a new dilemma: what came next? Having joined the military at only seventeen years old, he
hadn’t experienced life outside of the military since childhood and felt a bit lost.
Immediately,
he made the call to prioritize all aspects of healthcare, and spent two years intentionally seeking medical healthcare as
well as post-traumatic care. Then, when the pandemic hit, he joined the forces fighting a new kind of war and worked with
the Center for Disease Control (CDC).
A little over two years later, LTC Pike decided it
was time to chase a passion project. His first book, A Solider Against All Odds, chronicled his time in the military,
sharing a genuine and frank account of his years in uniform. It published in late 2022 and early 2023 and became a #1 bestseller.
However, LTC Pike wasn’t done. In the the years since, he’s published two more books. His second book
Out of the Uniform, Back into Civilian Life, serves as a firsthand guide for veterans seeking clear, actionable guidance
as they navigate the complexities of VA benefits and assistance programs in post-military life. His third book, Leading Through
the Crossfire, explores the difficulties and challenges of toxic leadership in a work environment — something deeply
relatable to military and non-military individuals alike.
“My worst experience, even
though I’ve been in the war, it was more like being in a toxic work environment,” he shared. “So I wanted
to write about what to do when you’re in a wicked workplace and to remind people that you’re not alone.”
In addition to his books, LTC Pike frequently speaks at events and on podcasts, sharing more of his story. He’s
currently working on his fourth book, which is not yet named but will explore white southern poverty.
Despite having spent so many years traveling the world — which LTC Pike shares instilled in him a great love
for authentic Korean cuisine — post-military life brought him back to Spartanburg, where he still resides.
“The community, the familiarity…I still travel a lot, but it’s always the place that I call home.
It always gives me good memories.”
To learn more about LTC Jason Pike, purchase
books or have him speak at your next event, visit www.jasonpike.org.
Know someone who should be featured? Let us know! Send us an email at [email protected].
Introducing The Cook’s Corner: A column from local kitchens
By The Kitchen Correspondent
Welcome to The
Cook’s Corner, where seasonal recipes and everyday favorites are shared from kitchens across our community. Each week,
we feature a dish we love- bringing the stories, traditions, and people that make our local food scene so special to the table.
Enjoy!
⸻
There are certain recipes that feel stitched into
your memory—meals you can picture being made long before you ever learned to cook yourself. This chicken crunch casserole
is one of those for me. It’s a recipe passed down from my grandmother, who truly loved being in the kitchen. She cooked
with confidence and joy, the kind of person who could make a meal feel like an event without ever writing anything down.
My mom, on the other hand, would be the first to tell you that cooking wasn’t exactly her passion—my
dad was always the main cook in our house. But this casserole? This was one of the few dishes she made often, and it was always
a hit. It showed up at family dinners, church gatherings, and anytime someone needed a meal dropped off. It’s comfort
food in the truest sense—filling, familiar, and meant to be shared.
This is the kind of
recipe you make for a crowd, for a new baby, for a neighbor going through a hard week, or simply for your own family when
you want leftovers that somehow taste even better the next day. It’s forgiving, flexible, and nearly impossible to mess
up. And honestly, even the filling on its own is hard to resist before it ever makes it to the oven.
⸻
Chicken Crunch Casserole
Serves: 6–8 (easily doubled for sharing)
Ingredients
• 3–4 cups cooked, chopped chicken
(I use bone-in chicken breasts, boiled, deboned, and chopped—but boneless skinless or even canned chicken works
in a pinch)
• 2 cups cooked white rice
• 1 medium onion,
finely chopped
• 2–3 celery stalks, finely chopped
•
4 tablespoons butter, divided
• Garlic salt, to taste
•
Black pepper, to taste
•1 (8 oz) can sliced water chestnuts, drained
•
1 can cream of mushroom soup
• 1 can cream of celery soup
•
¾–1 cup mayonnaise
• 2–3 cups corn flakes cereal, lightly crushed
⸻
Instructions
1. Cook the
chicken and rice. Start by cooking your chicken using your preferred method. I boil bone-in chicken breasts, then
debone and chop them once cooled. While the chicken cooks, prepare the white rice according to package directions.
2. Preheat the oven. Preheat to 350°F.
3. Sauté
the vegetables. In a skillet, melt 2 tablespoons butter over medium heat. Add the chopped onion and celery, seasoning
with garlic salt and pepper. Sauté just until slightly softened—you still want some crunch. Remove from heat.
4. Assemble the filling. In a large bowl, combine the cooked chicken, cooked rice, sautéed
onion and celery, water chestnuts, cream of mushroom soup, cream of celery soup, mayonnaise, and additional garlic salt and
pepper to taste. Mix well. (At this point, the mixture is already delicious.)
5. Transfer
to baking dish. Spread evenly into a greased 9x13-inch casserole dish.
6. Add
the topping. Sprinkle the crushed corn flakes evenly over the top. Dot with the remaining 2 tablespoons butter, cut
into small pats.
7. Bake. Bake uncovered for 35–45 minutes, or until
bubbly around the edges and golden brown on top.
8. Serve warm. Let rest for
a few minutes before serving.
⸻
This is one of those recipes
that doesn’t ask for perfection—just a little time and a lot of heart. It’s the dish I still turn to when
I want to bring comfort to someone else or recreate a piece of home for myself. And if you ask me, those are the very best
kinds of recipes to keep around.
⸻
Have a recipe worth sharing?
The Cook’s Corner welcomes submissions from home cooks, local residents, chefs, and restaurants throughout our community.
Selected contributors may be contacted for a brief interview so we can share the story behind the dish. To submit a recipe
or inquire about a collaboration, email [email protected]
