By Todd Vinyard • Contributing writer | Each athletic season has its challenges, but the 2020-2021 season has more obstacles than usual as teams try to play on safely during a pandemic.

Western Carolina University will postpone all fall sports this year following an Aug. 13 decision from the Southern Conference Council of Presidents to cancel conference competitions due to COVID-19. 

Changes to the alcohol situation at Western Carolina University games are on the way for the upcoming school year, both inside and outside of stadium walls. 

By Todd Vinyard • Contributing Writer | Western Carolina University basketball has been using the hashtag #ItsComing on social media this season to describe year two under head coach Mark Prosser. After a Catamount season featuring an improvement of eleven wins from seven to 18, maybe they might want to prepare for #ItsHere.

Beer and wine could join hot dogs and sodas as common concessions at Western Carolina University athletic events following a unanimous vote from the WCU Board of Trustees this month. 

By Todd Vinyard • Special to The Smoky Mountain News

Western Carolina University head basketball coach Larry Hunter’s team had beaten Samford 88-71 on Feb. 3 for a significant Southern Conference victory, and he had become one of only 40 other NCAA men’s basketball coaches with 700 career wins. Despite the milestone, Hunter followed his postgame routine of 46 years in coaching — finish the work of game day and prepare for the next game.

An enthusiastic friend of students. A die-hard fan of all things Catamount. An efficient administrator, effective political advocate, willing traveler and collaborative partner in meeting the needs of students, faculty, staff and the region as a whole.

Josh Moss’s professional world revolved around property management and vacation rentals at the time he decided to open a CrossFit gym.

By Paul Clark • SMN Correspondent

So, here’s the problem. It’s raining and you need to catch the CAT TRAN, one of the purple vans that shuttle students and staff around Western Carolina University.

With its obvious Cuban influences — the combination of guava and cream cheese, or even mango and cream cheese  — Mindy’s Bakery in Sylva is clearly not your typical mountain bakery.

But that’s not all that sets this small bakery apart: the five family members directly involved have graduated from or are currently enrolled at Western Carolina University. This family, who lives in Waynesville, is literally working its way through school one pastry at a time.

Raul and Mindy Guillama are the patriarch and matriarch of this family. They have three sons, Raul, Andre and Sebastian, who jumpstarted the family’s WCU train.

Andre and Sebastian have both graduated from WCU with degrees in construction management and finance, respectively. Young Raul is getting a degree in marketing, his father is getting an accounting degree and his mother is getting one in psychology.

“The three of us were going, and they said ‘we have a lot of free time so we might as well go to school, too,’” young Raul said.

“And accounting is something you can use in any business,” his father added. “I can do my own accounting and taxes.”

Seventy-year-old Raul is an engineer by training.

“I’m doing my share of contributing to the social security working force,” Raul said, only partly in jest.

Mindy, 50, the mother, explained that both she and her husband were born in Cuba. She came to America on the first Freedom Flight from Cuba to Miami that brought exiles to this country. Her husband was already in America as a young student when Fidel Castro took over. His family joined him in the U.S. in flight from the ensuing oppression.

“He has a brother-in-law whose father was killed in his arms,” Mindy said. “We are a family that came to this country because we had to — it was either communism or freedom.”

That said, the family loves America and what it has given them in return, Mindy said. The Guillama family ended up in Western North Carolina about eight years ago following years of vacationing in this region.

These days, they live together, work together and go to school together.

Husband and wife are taking a psychology class together. Raul the older and Raul the younger are in calculus together. They both said that each is doing equally well, and they choose to sit side by side in the class.

Baking is in the family blood. Their daughter, Mindy, who lives in New York, is also a baker and worked with them in the past.

Mindy’s Bakery specializes in wedding and special occasion cakes, as well as tropical desserts such as flan, coconut cakes, and the Cuban “pastelito” pastries.

“I got the éclairs and took them to work one day and everybody just loved them,” said customer Diane Winstead who was at the bakery one morning this week picking up another order of éclairs for an office party. “It just all looks so fresh.”