Greenville, SC, Sports Teams Create Strong Community Connections
Rooting for the home team in Greenville, SC, is as much about “home” as it is about “team.” That certainly is the way four of Greenville’s sports teams – the Drive (baseball), Triumph (men’s soccer), Liberty (women’s soccer) and Swamp Rabbits (hockey) – feel about their connection to the local community.
The Greenville Drive baseball team was the first of these teams to call Greenville home. The club was formed in 2006 by advertising executive Craig Brown, who grew up in Michigan. He had never been to Greenville until he visited when seeking a place to start the new minor-league baseball franchise. Within a decade, Brown and his family became so enamored with the region that they relocated to Greenville full time in 2016.
“We fell in love with this community,” says Craig Brown’s son, Jeff Brown, who serves as president of The Drive, the High-A affiliate of the Boston Red Sox. “This has been an incredible, unplanned journey for us. Yes, there is baseball going on, but we’re really not in the baseball business. We’re in the community business.”
The attachment to Greenville stretches back even further for the Erwin family, the majority owner of the Greenville Triumph SC and Greenville Liberty SC. Joe Erwin was born in South Carolina and has lived in Greenville since co-founding marketing agency Erwin Penland (now EP+Co) in 1986. He and his wife, Gretchen, helped form the Triumph in 2018 and the Liberty in 2022.
“My father and mom thought this was a great opportunity to bring the rich sports tradition of soccer to the Upstate,” Erwin says. “We are in an area with sports fandom at every level, and they felt the timing was right to add soccer to that.”
The Drive to Succeed
The Drive has helped chauffeur more than 125 players into baseball’s major leagues. This lineup includes stars like Mookie Betts, Xander Bogaerts, Jackie Bradley Jr., Clay Buchholz, Jon Lester and Christian Vázquez.
But the product on the field is only part of what the Drive hopes to accomplish. Craig Brown says the club has been striving for the past 20 years to strengthen the bond between team and town.
“We have fun at the games, but at heart, we’re a community-engagement platform,” Jeff Brown says. “Last year, we had about 120 events outside of baseball that took place at the ballpark. This has always been and always will be about so much more than baseball. The connection we’ve been able to develop in this community – the relationships and the support – has been incredible.”
Superb Soccer
The Triumph and Liberty are about to have a closer community connection, as well. After playing most of their home games the past four seasons at Paladin Stadium on Furman University campus, the teams will soon sport their own 10,000-seat facility in the suburb of Mauldin that will also be utilized for area youth sports, concerts, festivals and other events.
“It’s a place that we can call home and allow our clubs to achieve long-term stability,” Erwin says of the new facility, which is scheduled to open in 2026. “It’s a place to really begin the next chapter for our teams and have a place we can call a permanent home.”
Both clubs have had considerable success in their short existence. The Triumph made the USL League One playoffs each of its first six seasons, advancing to the championship game three times and winning the title in 2020. Meanwhile, the Liberty made the USL W League semifinals in their opening campaign.
A Stomping Good Time
As for the Greenville Swamp Rabbits, they interact with the public 36 times each year during home hockey games and about 200 times away from the ice through a variety of community events. Many of those gatherings, from school programs to outdoor festivals, feature the team’s fuzzy mascot, Stomper.
“We’re a community organization first and a professional hockey team second,” says Tim Vieira, president of the Swamp Rabbitts. “We strive to provide family, affordable entertainment while also being good members of the community.”
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