Boys and Girls Clubs merge

With a giant World War II era fighter plane suspended overhead, Vance Hammond and Greg Tolbert announced Tuesday night there would be no more Boys and Girls Club of Cherokee County.

Speaking at “The Hanger,” a youth center at First Baptist Church of Spartanburg that includes the vintage aircraft and other attractions, Hammond and Tolbert heralded the formation of “The Boys and Girls Clubs of Upstate South Carolina” as a new umbrella organization merging the former Gaffney group and the club of metropolitan Spartanburg, among others.

“The new organization won’t really change much in Cherokee County,” Hammond said. “Really, we work together so much already, we thought it would be a good idea to merge the two groups. This plan has actually been in the works for some time, even before I came to Gaffney.”

Tolbert, the president of the new group, emphasized that the structural changes were to help provide better services for the children who attend the clubs and rely on them for such services as homework help and character-building education.

“It’s really more about helping these kids than it is growing clubs,” Tolbert said. “We’ve got a great development strategy, and getting that plan to kids is key. The Gaffney club has been there a long time and it has served a lot of kids. It will serve a lot more. And for other counties and locations where there once were clubs and aren’t now, those clubs will be coming back.”

The ramifications of the merger were all positive from Hammond’s point of view.

“Our club in Gaffney will still be self-sufficient,” he said. “I like to kind of compare it to the name change at the University of South Carolina at Spartanburg. Really, students came from Gaffney, Greenville and all over to attend the school, so they changed the name to USCUpstate. But, the college still remained the same. Now, when our club competes on the national level, we’ll have many more members to choose from. And I know the increase in members and programs will help us stay true to our mission.”

But, flanked by X Boxes, a full basketball court, two floors of gaming tables, a full service snack bar and a dedicated homework study area, Hammond couldn’t help but have grandiose visions.

“Frankly, I hope this merger will inspire the people in Cherokee County,” he said. “We can really make something happen now that we are all working together and I hope this will get us going on our Pecan Street facility to turn it into a teen center that can rival a building like ‘The Hanger’ here in Spartanburg.”