Pride-filled pandemonium reigned in Cherokee Saturday night, Dec. 8, as the victorious Cherokee Braves football team returned to town. Police cars and fire trucks from the Cherokee Police Department and Jackson County Sheriff’s Department flashed their lights and blared their horns in an escort that had met the buses all the way back at Balsam, and fireworks filled the air as fans already tired from the five-hour drive back from Raleigh cheered till they were hoarse.

After years of steady upward progress, the freshman-to-sophomore retention rate at Western Carolina University dipped slightly for students who enrolled as first-time, full-time freshmen in fall 2016.

When Chancellor David Belcher asked Sam Miller, Western Carolina University’s vice chancellor for students success, to tell the Board of Trustees about Western’s “terrifyingly good enrollment activity,” he was only half kidding about the word “terrifying” — but he was completely serious about the word “good.”

Through careers as students, teachers and administrators, David and Susan Belcher have marked the milestones of their lives in college campuses, but their 2011 arrival to Western Carolina University was the day they discovered their home. 

“It was kind of instant. It was kind of love at first sight,” Susan said. “It’s not the (natural) beauty. It’s the people. And it’s the community also. This region takes care of each other, through and through.” 

When Shining Rock Classical Academy opened in 2015, the public charter school was hailed as a victory for local proponents of school choice and promised to provide an academically rigorous, comprehensive college preparatory curriculum.

Swain County Schools will apply for a multi-million dollar grant through the new Needs-Based Public School Capital Fund that can be used for school construction.

Denial of a permit to build a 388-bed student housing complex in Cullowhee will land Jackson County in court after Atlanta-based Mallory & Evans Development filed a motion asking for a judge to overturn the decision.

Records continue to fall by the wayside at Western Carolina University, as total student enrollment has surpassed 11,000 for the first time in the institution’s history and as the GPA of the entering freshman class has hit an all-time high.

A summer of hard work is paying tasty dividends for some kids in Swain County 4-H — dividends paid in the form of tomatoes, corn, peppers, beans and zucchini.

This year was the first for a 4-H learning garden located at Southwestern Community College’s Swain Center, and according to Jennifer Hill — a 4-H extension agent with Swain County Cooperative Extension — it was a success.

Now in their senior and sophomore years of high school, Karen and José Ramos — ages 18 and 16, respectively — are just starting to imagine how they might make their mark on the world after graduation.