From Sylva to Tokyo, Ella Gamble is making a name for herself on the volleyball court. 

As she heads into her fourth and final year of college eligibility, Gamble, a Smoky Mountain High School graduate, is getting ready to pack her bags to head to the 2025 Deaflympics, to be held in Japan’s sprawling capital city. 

Residents of Jackson County have long voiced their support, organized and fundraised for a skatepark with little to show other than a temporary half-pipe that stood behind Motion Makers in Sylva for just over one year. 

Jackson County Public Schools announced that current assistant principal Joey Robinson has been named the new principal at Smoky Mountain High School. Robinson will step into his new role on July 1. 

The Catamount School, a laboratory school operating on the campus of Smoky Mountain High School, will relocate to the campus of Western Carolina University next school year after Jackson County Public Schools approved a relocation plan due to the need for more space at Smoky Mountain High School. 

The memorandum of understanding between Jackson County Public Schools and the Catamount School is up for annual review, and this year, JCPS is reconsidering the agreement that permits the Catamount School to operate on the campus of Smoky Mountain High School, where it occupies valuable classroom space in a system that needs all the room it can get. 

A facilities study for Jackson County Schools that will help inform capital improvements for years to come found several schools in the county are overcrowded, something administration and school board members hope a traditional middle school will help alleviate.  

A group of Smoky Mountain High School seniors could be facing criminal charges for what administrators see as taking a senior prank a step too far.

The arrival of COVID-19 in the United States caused a storm of cancelations, closures, warnings and fears, but there’s one in particular that hit home for Smoky Mountain High School senior Ryan Holler. 

It will cost nearly half a million dollars to upgrade facilities at the Smoky Mountain High School baseball fields to comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act. 

A plan to replace the football field at Smoky Mountain High School with artificial turf is likely to move ahead following an engineer’s finding that the work could be done well within Jackson County Public School’s $715,000 cap for the project.