Recognized by Fitness Living Magazine™ For hometown access, open training space, and a Pageland fitness culture built around familiarity.
Stars Sports & Fitness did not begin as a fitness center. Around 2014 it opened as an indoor home for a local travel baseball organization — cages, mounds, turf. The gym was added later, because families and young athletes needed somewhere close to train. It now carries the business at roughly 700 members, while the baseball still runs in the back.
“We want that small-town, hometown feel. Everybody’s welcome, and it’s a family atmosphere.”Trent Strickland / Fitness Trainer & General Manager, Stars Sports & Fitness
Space. Trent says the most common first reaction is surprise, because the building does not look from the road like what it holds. The fitness floor runs 4,000 square feet under ceilings he estimates at 15 to 20 feet, with no poles in the middle to work around. He believes that openness is what members mention most.
Then the tone. Serious lifters and first-week members share the same floor, and Trent describes a room that is deliberately laid back — everybody knows everybody, and nobody is asked to prove they belong before they start. The doors stay open 24 hours a day, the office is staffed nine to five, and his own cell number is easy enough to find that he expects it to ring.
Trent Strickland runs Stars Sports & Fitness on a hometown standard: know the members, keep the price within reach, and keep the door open around the clock. That tone gives the gym its laid-back, family-first identity.
Inside Stars Sports & Fitness
Creating a welcoming gym environment is not a slogan at Stars Sports & Fitness. It is the reason the business exists in the shape it does. Trent Strickland grew up in Pageland, South Carolina, and when asked what the business means to him personally, he did not describe revenue or expansion. He described a community he has been part of his whole life, and the chance to keep building relationships inside it.
Stars Sports & Fitness is a locally owned, 24/7 fitness center in Pageland, South Carolina.
Trent Strickland describes a small-town gym with a family atmosphere: open floor space, a reasonable price point, equipment for different fitness levels, and a manager who knows the members personally.
At the time of his interview, the gym served roughly 700 members within an 18,000-square-foot facility. Its turf area and indoor training space keep it connected to the youth sports that first brought the business to life.
A Hometown Gym With Sports Roots
Stars grew from an indoor baseball facility into a gym for the wider community. Its appeal rests on practical access, space to train, and the familiar relationships Trent wants to preserve.
How a travel-baseball facility grew into a 24/7 fitness center.
Why space, access, price, and familiarity define the gym’s appeal.
How to understand Stars as a self-directed gym with seasonal classes rather than a year-round class or personal-training studio.
A Gym That Grew Out of a Ball Field
The origin of Stars Sports & Fitness is unusual for a gym. It started as a travel baseball organization for area kids who wanted to take the next step in youth baseball, and the facility was built to serve that: indoor cages, mounds, turf, and enough room to run a full practice regardless of weather. Trent puts the start around 2014 or 2015.
The fitness center came from watching. Trent and his partners saw a need in the area — young athletes who needed strength work, families who needed somewhere local to train — and added a gym onto what already existed. Members followed. The fitness side grew until it became the primary business, and Trent describes the shift plainly as the smarter decision. The baseball took a back seat, but it never left the building.
Why the Room Feels Different
Ask Trent what surprises visitors and the answer is size. From outside, the building understates itself. Inside, the facility runs 18,000 square feet in total: 4,000 devoted to the fitness center, 12,000 more of turf at the back. The fitness floor carries a full cardio line — a Stairmaster, eight treadmills, ellipticals, recumbent bikes, rowing machines — alongside a complete set of Cybex selectorized machines, dumbbells from five to 115 pounds, a Smith machine, cable machines, flat benches, and power racks. The turf holds sleds, battle ropes, and enough open ground that members can run their own conditioning work.
But the detail Trent returns to is the ceiling. He estimates 15 to 20 feet, and no poles standing in the middle of the floor. It sounds like a small thing. In practice it is the difference between a gym where members move and a gym where they negotiate. He believes that openness, more than any single machine, is what members mention when they talk about why they like training there.
Known, Unhurried, and Welcome to Train
A member at Stars Sports & Fitness is meant to feel recognized rather than processed. Trent describes a laid-back room where everybody knows everybody, where people who take training seriously and people just starting out use the same floor without friction, and where the point is not to look like a big commercialized gym — it is to feel like the town it sits in.
Personal Attention in a Self-Directed Gym
Most members follow their own workouts, but Trent wants the relationship with the gym to feel personal. Knowing who comes through the door, staying available for questions, and recognizing the people behind the membership are part of the experience he describes.
Stars Sports & Fitness matters because it treats familiarity as infrastructure: a manager who knows the parking lot, a price a small town can carry, and enough open floor that nobody has to earn the right to feel welcome.
What Stars Sports & Fitness Offers
Stars Sports & Fitness is best understood as a 24/7 local fitness center with an open training floor, turf roots, and a hometown culture rather than a polished chain-style amenity club.
Who Stars Sports & Fitness May Be a Good Fit For
Stars may fit readers who want open access, a practical floor, and a town-centered environment.
People who already know how they like to train may value 24/7 access.
The interview describes a laid-back atmosphere where first-time members are welcome.
The turf and sports roots may matter for families connected to youth athletics.
“I have been taking my daughter for softball training and lessons to Star Sports. The owners and staff here are top notch instructors and are more in for the kids then the money. I applaud their service and giveback to the community. Thank you Star Sports for welcoming my daughter and teaching her the right way to play!”
What Four Years of Showing Up Can Do
Trent declined to name him, but one member’s arc has stayed with him. The man arrived close to 300 pounds and simply started coming. Every day, Trent says — and over the next four or five years, the body changed in front of the whole gym. The eating changed with it. Today he is working in the other direction, building back toward 210 or 215 pounds lean.
What Trent finds remarkable is what came after. The member became curious enough about why it worked that he earned personal training certifications on his own initiative, wanting to understand the body he had just rebuilt. He has since been hired by the county sheriff’s office as a deputy — a job with its own fitness demands. Trent tells it as one story, but it is the story he tells: a person changed his body, then changed his life around it, inside a gym that mostly just kept the lights on and the door unlocked.
Room for Different Ways to Train
Experienced lifters and first-week members share the floor at Stars. The equipment supports different routines, while Trent describes the same laid-back welcome for everyone who walks in.
Why This Matters Locally
Pageland sits close enough to Charlotte that the pull toward a bigger market is real. Trent has thought about a second location and would like one — but not there. When he imagines expansion, he pictures another small town like his own, offered the same things he can offer here, with the family environment intact. The measure of success he named is not a revenue figure. It is still being able to ride by the building and know whose cars are in the lot.
For people searching for a gym in Pageland, a 24-hour fitness center in Chesterfield County, or somewhere local to start without feeling watched, Stars Sports & Fitness offers a clear point of difference. Most members find it the way things have always been found here — word of mouth, a Facebook post, a name mentioned twice. What keeps them, by Trent’s account, is what happens after they walk in: a room with space in it, a price that makes sense, and someone behind the counter who already knows their name.
The Youth Side Stays Open
The fitness center may carry the business now, but Trent is direct that the youth side is not something he intends to leave behind. If it rains and a team needs somewhere to practice, the instruction is simple: call him, and he will get them set up. Baseball, football, soccer — all of it has been through the 12,000-square-foot turf area at one time or another. His reasoning is not complicated. The youth are the future, and someone has to train them up.
The business also gives him something back. Running the facility has returned enough of his own time that he coaches baseball and football at the high school, which puts him in front of local athletes and their parents nearly every day. He describes the effect as relationships that keep growing — people who recognize him and his family when they go out to eat, who know what he does for the town. He calls it being where his feet are.
Questions Readers Ask
Who Is Trent Strickland?
Trent Strickland is the fitness trainer and general manager at Stars Sports & Fitness in Pageland, South Carolina. In his interview, he described starting the facility around 2014 as an indoor home for a travel baseball organization, adding a fitness center as families and young athletes in the area needed somewhere local to train, and coaching high school baseball and football alongside running the business.
What Is Stars Sports & Fitness Known For?
Trent Strickland said the facility is still best known locally for its baseball training, which runs on indoor cages, mounds, and turf. The 24/7 fitness center has since become the larger side of the business, serving roughly 700 members.
Is Stars Sports & Fitness Beginner Friendly?
Based on Trent Strickland’s interview, the gym is meant to be accepting of every fitness level. He described a laid-back, family atmosphere where experienced lifters and first-time members share the same floor, and said newcomers are welcome to walk through, try a machine, or train for a day before deciding.
What Equipment Does Stars Sports & Fitness Have?
Trent Strickland described a 4,000-square-foot fitness floor with a Stairmaster, eight treadmills, ellipticals, recumbent bikes, and rowing machines, a full line of Cybex selectorized machines, dumbbells from five to 115 pounds, a Smith machine, cable machines, flat benches, and power racks. A 12,000-square-foot turf area at the back holds sleds, battle ropes, and open space for conditioning work.
What Makes Stars Sports & Fitness Different in Pageland?
Trent Strickland pointed to a reasonable price point, an open floor with 15- to 20-foot ceilings and no poles to work around, and a small-town family atmosphere. He said the gym is not trying to be a large commercial chain or a full-amenity club with pools and saunas.
How Can Someone Arrange a First Visit?
Start with the official Stars Sports & Fitness website and contact the gym to arrange a tour. Trent described welcoming newcomers to walk through or try the space; confirm current visit options, staffed hours, and membership terms before arriving.
Key Takeaways
Stars Sports & Fitness is a locally owned, 24/7 fitness center in Pageland, South Carolina, serving roughly 700 members inside an 18,000-square-foot facility.
Trent Strickland treats the small-town, family atmosphere as the product: everybody welcome, laid back, and nothing like a large commercialized gym.
His training philosophy starts with habits, routine, and consistency, and now serves a growing base of Silver Sneakers and Silver&Fit members alongside young athletes.
The 12,000-square-foot turf area keeps the facility tied to local youth sports, with indoor practice space available to baseball, football, and soccer teams.
Conclusion
Stars Sports & Fitness is not really a story about equipment, though the equipment is there. It is a story about what a gym becomes when the person running it never left the town it serves. Trent Strickland grew up in Pageland, coaches its high school athletes, recognizes its trucks, and built a business that reflects all of it — open, affordable, unhurried, and hard to feel anonymous in.
Asked to finish the sentence — his business is the place for people who — Trent’s answer was unhurried and specific: people who come and create good, healthy habits, build relationships, and build confidence. For anyone in Pageland weighing whether to start, his first step is not a program or a package. It is a phone call to him, and a conversation that begins the relationship before the membership does.
Trent Strickland
Trent brings a lifelong connection to Pageland and a background in local sports to a gym built around access, consistency, and familiar relationships.
Trent Strickland is the fitness trainer and general manager at Stars Sports & Fitness in Pageland, South Carolina. The facility opened around 2014 as an indoor training home for a local travel baseball organization, and the fitness center was added as families and young athletes in the area looked for somewhere close to train. It has since grown into a 24-hour gym serving roughly 700 members. Trent also coaches baseball and football at the high school, which keeps him in daily contact with the families the business serves.
Trent’s approach begins with habits rather than programming. He tells members the body runs on what it is given — good fuel, a routine worth keeping, and the discipline to keep moving — and that consistency, not intensity, is what produces energy and confidence. His stated mission is to give his community an affordable opportunity to live a healthy life, and to be a place people are glad to walk into.
His values include hometown relationships, affordability, open access, positive reinforcement, and support for local youth. At Stars Sports & Fitness, those values show up in 24-hour entry, a membership price set for the town it serves, a laid-back floor open to every fitness level, indoor baseball training, and turf space local teams can use when they need it.
About This Spotlight
This Spotlight examines hometown access, open training space, and a Pageland fitness culture built around familiarity.
This profile belongs to Fitness Living Magazine™’s Local Fitness Leadership Series. Its editorial basis includes the interview, supplied client material, and public information from the featured business.
This Spotlight draws on the Fitness Living Magazine™ interview with Trent Strickland, the existing editorial draft, supplied customer-review material, and the official Stars Sports & Fitness website. Public access and location details were checked on October 1, 2026.
Experiences described here reflect interviews, public materials, and supplied client material; individual results vary. Confirm current services, availability, pricing, and health-related decisions directly with the business and qualified professionals.
