North Carolina
Miss North Carolina inspires Lake Norman Elementary students (Photos), Iredell Free News
BY KARISSA MILLER
Students at Lake Norman Elementary School received a special visit Friday morning from Miss North Carolina Taylor Loyd, who sang an opera song and shared her journey with them.
She sang “Poison Aria” from Rome & Juliet and “Italian Street Song.”
“A long time ago I was a student at Lake Norman Elementary,” Loyd told the students.
In fourth grade, she decided to dress up like Maria Beale Fletcher, who was Miss America from North Carolina, for her living history project.
“What is really crazy is that I dressed up like her in fourth grade. Then when I grew up I got to compete at Miss America, which was really amazing,” she said.
She told students that she sang “Amour, ranime mon courage” during the Miss North Carolina pageant.
She also shared some of her experience competing for Miss America. She was one of the three talent competition winners and finished in the top 11 in last month’s pageant in Orlando, Fla.
“I guess you think my job is sort of like being a princess,” she said. “It’s more than just posing for pictures. Being Miss North Carolina means that I get to do a lot of amazing things. I get to meet a lot of amazing people just like you.”
She showed a slide show picture of her visiting a children’s hospital.
“I like to bring toys to the children at the hospital,” she said.
One reason she likes to visit hospitals is because she likes to sing there.
“Singing is my favorite things to do and it’s very important to me,” she said.
She said it made her feel better to sing when she was sad, and that it helped her brother when he was in the hospital after a bad accident.
After working hard on singing, she auditioned for the choir in fourth grade.
“I didn’t make it into the choir and I loved to sing. I didn’t really know why,” she recalled. “Have you ever tried to do something and it didn’t turn out the way you didn’t want it to? It can be very easy to give up.”
Loyd said that she learned that everybody has a talent and hers is singing opera. She said that the first time she ever heard an opera singer was at Lake Norman Elementary.
“I decided to keep trying and not give up. If I had just given up and decided to never sing again because I wasn’t the best at singing that one song I tried to sing then I would never have ended up being Miss North Carolina,” she said.
Loyd told students to never give up on pursuing your goals and dreams.
“You have to remember to believe in yourself — you never know what you can do if you don’t do it,” she said.
Following her presentation, Principal Nichole Tilley surprised Loyd and reunited her with some of her former teachers, many of whom still teach at the school.
Related
♦ The beauty of being Taylor Loyd
Photos
North Carolina and NC State, scheduled to meet just once in the men’s basketball regular season for the second consecutive season, are working to schedule a nonconference meeting in Greensboro in December, WRAL has learned.
The Atlantic Coast Conference rivals had played annual games in Raleigh and in Chapel Hill for more than 100 years before last season when the teams met just once in Raleigh. This season, the ACC scheduled just one meeting between the schools in Chapel Hill.
The additional meeting, which is not finalized, would be played Dec. 15 in Greensboro, according to a source.
The 18-team ACC moved from 20 conference games to 18 before last season in an attempt to improve the league’s NCAA Tournament credentials. It worked as the league received eight bids to the NCAA Tournament in 2026, but it also created some scheduling changes, including the elimination of a second game between NC State and UNC in most seasons.
The current conference schedule dictates that each school plays two teams twice (a primary partner and a variable partner), plays 14 teams once and misses one school altogether. In 2026-27, UNC will play Duke (primary) and Louisville (variable) twice and won’t play Clemson. NC State will play Wake Forest (primary) and California (variable) twice and won’t play Syracuse.
Greensboro was the longtime home of the conference office. The ACC men’s basketball tournament has been held at First Horizon Coliseum, formerly the Greensboro Coliseum, 29 times – the most in league history.
For decades, the ACC played a true round robin among its members — a format that became unworkable as the league grew to 12, 15 and, now, 18 basketball-playing schools.
State lawmakers have pursued various measures to force schools in the UNC System to play each other, citing the economic impact of such meetings. North Carolina and NC State are UNC System schools.
A 2024 bill would have required the two ACC schools to play each other and other in-state public universities in football and basketball. A 2025 bill, aimed at potential conference realignment, would have required that NC State and UNC play each annually in football, men’s and women’s basketball, baseball and softball. The Senate’s 2025 budget proposal would have required more basketball games between UNC, NC State and smaller schools across the state. The budget would have added UNC and NC State to the schools that receive annual distributions from sports betting tax revenue.
None of those measures have become law.
NC State and North Carolina have been conference mates since 1911, first in the South Atlantic Intercollegiate Athletic Association, then in the Southern Conference and now the ACC. Both have been members of the ACC since its 1953 founding.
There is some sad news from the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission’s popular Barn Owl Live Cam.
Wildlife officials say a Great Horned Owl entered the barn Wednesday around midnight and killed one of the barn owl owlets. Biologists have not been able to determine which owlet was lost.
They have confirmed it was one of the three youngest birds in the nest. The Wildlife Commission says the incident is heartbreaking but also a natural part of life in the wild.
Great Horned Owls are one of the main predators of Barn Owls, and encounters between the two species do happen. The attack was captured on the live camera.
Officials say the video also shows an extremely rare moment when the adult female Barn Owl fought the Great Horned Owl on top of the nest box. Despite the loss, the surviving owlets are expected to continue growing over the coming weeks.
They will lose their fluffy down feathers, begin exploring outside the barn, and continue developing hunting skills.
The Wildlife Commission says some of the young owls could leave the nest as early as July.
After leaving the nest, they usually travel alone and may eventually move hundreds of miles from where they hatched. The Barn Owl Live Cam remains available for the public to watch.
(WLOS) — In a tragic update, one of the baby barn owls being monitored by the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission has died after a great horned owl entered the barn and killed the owlet. The barn owlets had attracted worldwide attention through the wildlife commission’s ongoing observation efforts.
Officials with N.C. Wildlife said it is not yet clear which owlet was killed, but confirmed it was one of the three youngest.
The wildlife commission said it captured a photo of the great horned owl and the adult female barn owl fighting on top of the box, calling it an “extremely rare encounter to capture on camera.”
PHOTOS: OWLETS ‘HOO’ GAINED WORLDWIDE FAME ARE GROWING QUICKLY INTO YOUNG ADULTS
The wildlife commission said that while this loss is tragic, it is a common encounter because great horned owls are a top predator of barn owls. Officials also said this will likely not be the last encounter.
Over the next few weeks, the commission said viewers will likely see the remaining owlets start exploring, leaving the barn and learning to hunt. The fledglings may leave the barn as early as July to start hunting on their own, according to the commission.
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