By Rosaland Tyler
Associate Editor
New Journal and Guide
Miss Chesapeake is Andolyn Medina.
She was one of 12 women who competed for the title at the pageant held at Greenbrier Middle School on March 7. Medina is a junior on a four-year scholarship at Hollins University in Roanoke.
She will compete in the Miss Virginia pageant that will be held in Roanoke in June.
Medina, 19, has performed the national anthem at several events including a 2012 performance for President Barack Obama, a 2013 Miss America Pageant, and a 2014 NBA Washington Wizards and Mystics game.
Medina, a Hickory High School graduate, hopes to become a pediatric psychologist. She is the daughter of Navy Officers Carolyn and Andres Medina who met in Hampton Roads at the Portsmouth Naval Hospital and married April 15, 1990.
“I always had a vision of Andolyn accomplishing so much,” said her mother Carolyn Medina, recalling the time a Chesapeake pastor predicted that her daughter would someday perform in prominent settings.
“What’s weird, Bishop Darrell Scott who pastored Pleasant Grove Baptist in Chesapeake saw our daughter and said our daughter who was about 4 would do some amazing things,” Carolyn Medina said.
“He said she would sing and her voice would be so angelic that she would sing for thousands. There would be tears of joy wherever she performed. At the time she could barely sing. But she began to take voice lessons and piano at around age 5,” her mother explained.
“As time has passed, everything that the bishop said has started to come to fruition. She sang for the NBA players just last year to the Washington Wizards. She is now an official national anthem singer for the Wizards.”
Medina said this is how she looks at her daughter’s future. That is, she reflects on the encouraging prediction that her pastor made many years ago.
“She wants to get her doctoral degree,” her mother said. “She is thinking of being a pediatric or sports psychologist. She wants to tie in music therapy. She feels it has to be in her life. She wants to marry and have a family. She said she wants to give back to society and the community.”
She and her parents are members of First Baptist Church South Hill, Chesapeake.
