Commercial Roofing Contractors in Little Elm, TX

Pierce Lisner, 17, longs to be the next Chuck Morgan. His bellowing voice makes you think a pro is in the press box announcing games--not a baby-faced senior.

LITTLE ELM, Texas — The sounds of an aluminum bat cracking a baseball echo through 'The Backyard' at Little Elm High School on a Friday afternoon.

'The Backyard,' is what the school and players call the baseball stadium.

It's 4:29 p.m., and a JV baseball game is set to start in one minute. Suddenly, from the stadium speakers, a silky and polished voice comes over the PA, letting folks know the game is about to begin.

The names of the starting lineups for both teams are read, and the first batter steps up to the plate.

Again, you hear from the speakers the name and position of the player.

The bellowing voice sounds eerily similar to Chuck Morgan, the PA announcer for the Texas Rangers. You can tell, especially for the home team, the batters walk into the box -- feeling a little taller.

After a few batters, someone with golden pipes is again heard on the PA reading an ad for a local HVAC company.

You start to wonder: who in the hell is announcing a JV game this dang good on a Friday? It sounds like someone who knows what they're doing, someone who has been doing this for years.

Surely, it can't be some baby-faced kid with a mullet, bottle cap glasses and the crushing inability to grow facial hair.

Well, turns out 17-year-old Pierce Lisner had me fooled.

"I would love facial hair, actually," Lisner said. "A mustache is my goal, but I can't grow one, and it makes me really mad."

Lisner is a Little Elm High School senior and the voice of the Lobos. He's used to people thinking he's an older and accomplished professional, instead of some wiry kid in a T-shirt and gym shorts.

"People will hear me announce a game, and they'll want to meet me after to tell me how good of a job I did," Lisner said. "They have no idea I'm in high school."

"They say, 'Man, I thought you were a 40-year-old man who ate a pack of cigarettes for breakfast!' I say thanks," Lisner said with a laugh. "I can never tell if it's a compliment or not."

Lisner's story is pretty cool because it starts with him going from the bench of the JV baseball team during his sophomore year to the booth.

"My baseball career wasn't working out. I was pitching on the mound and wasn't doing well," he said.

But someone not showing up to one of his games to announce, opened a brand new door for the teen.

"They needed someone to announce the game, and I just raised my hand and said, 'I guess I'll do it," Lisner said. "I was shaking the entire time but when I was done, I came back down, and the coaches told me I was really good at it."

Lisner gave up sports at the end of his sophomore year and started announcing JV and varsity games full-time.

But not before recording a pretty hilarious moment in his sports career when he was announcing a game in his uniform and had to stop midway to take the mound for a pitching change.

Lisner threw a few strikeouts and then went back to announcing for the rest of the game.

"It was pretty wild," he said.

The teen also did broadcasting work for the football and basketball teams, once giving up sports. Not only that, he met Chuck Morgan along the way in his high school career.

The Rangers legend often does meet and greets before games.

"Sometimes, when I'm announcing batters, it can come out as Chuck," Lisner said with a chuckle. "The compliments are my favorite part, and I was like, this is what I want to do."

Once Lisner graduates, he plans to attend Collin County Community College and transfer to UNT. Honing his craft will be a significant focus in college, and I'll likely hear his voice again someday.

"I just want to throw my voice out there," Lisner said confidently.

Little Elm ISD’s board of trustees unanimously voted to remove Daniel Gallagher as superintendent and place him on administrative leave with pay, according to LEISD board President Jason Olson.

“This change is necessary for the immediate leadership needs of our students, teachers, staff and administration,” according to a Feb. 19 district statement.

The board has not announced specific reasons for Gallagher’s immediate removal.

Shay Adams, LEISD’s assistant superintendent for business and finance services, will act as acting superintendent until the search for LEISD’s permanent superintendent is complete, according to the board’s statement posted on Facebook on Feb. 19.

The board’s next steps are to find a firm to aid in the next superintendent search, Olson said.

Before being placed on administrative leave, Gallagher announced in November his plans to retire by the end of 2023, according to a district statement.

“We celebrate the successes the district has experienced under Mr. Gallagher,” Olson said in the November statement.

Olson also signed the announcement Feb. 19 to remove Gallagher.

Gallagher became superintendent in 2017 following his time as the assistant superintendent for educational services.

Gallagher’s page on LEISD’s website is unavailable as of Feb. 20. Gallagher did not immediately respond to Community Impact’s request for comment.

Reporter, Frisco & McKinney

Riley joined Community Impact in January 2023 after graduating with honors from Columbia Graduate School of Journalism in May 2022. She covers the communities of Frisco and McKinney. Prior to CI, Riley served as the David Jayne Fellow for ABC News in London, a reporter for Religion News Service, an editor for Odyssey, a writer for D Magazine and a radio news talk show host. She has had bylines in the Washington Post, Yahoo News, ABCNews.com, the Battalion Newspaper, Columbia News Service and more. When she is not writing, she enjoys baking, fitness and caffeinating.

An award-winning barbecue concept has closed a location: Hurtado Barbecue, the small local chain owned by husband-and-wife Brandon and Hannah Hurtado, closed its location in Little Elm at 100 Hardwicke Ln.

The restaurant shared the news in a Facebook post, stating that its last day was Sunday, February 5.

"It is with a heavy heart that we announce the closure of our Little Elm location," their post said. "We gave it everything we had, but after being forced to close with severe water leaks and inclement weather in a very seasonal town, we unfortunately couldn't recover."

"We're still open in Arlington and Fort Worth and will be hyper focused on making those locations two of the best in the business," they said.

Brandon Hurtado started his BBQ journey doing barbecue in his backyard, then graduated to a food truck before opening the first brick-and-mortar location in Arlington in February 2020. Bolstered by incentives from the city of Little Elm, they opened a location there in mid-2022, followed by a third location in Fort Worth in September 2022.

Their two locations in Tarrant County have both prospered, but Little Elm came with some challenges, Brandon said in an email.

"Little Elm is a lakefront town," he said. "They're incredibly busy during the summer with a massive beach and boat docks, but abysmal sales during the fall and winter."

"Our Fort Worth and Arlington locations are thriving, but I just couldn't take another day in Little Elm with fewer than 25 customers walking in the door," he said.

Hurtado's served its menu of brisket, ribs, sausage, turkey, and burnt ends plus sides such as Hatch chile mac & cheese and baked potato salad. Little Elm had one thing the other locations did not: a full bar. To no avail.

Some Little Elm locals floated theories on the location. "It’s that building. It’s cursed!" said one.

"We went there once a month. That building for whatever reason can’t seem to hold a restaurant more than a year," said another.

Beyond the building itself, others noted that the location was remote, made less accessible by a toll bridge.

"That location was too far into Little Elm for the price point Hurtado’s offered and not convenient even for someone who lives in the area. The same was for Kabuki who occupied the space before Hurtado’s," said a third.

"The truth is, you are in a bad spot because the drive is far out from most people. Most people didn’t even know you existed," said a fourth.

With an anticipated population boom that could double the town’s resident count over the next decade, Little Elm won’t be quite so little in the coming years.

Little Elm is currently around 75% built out, with an estimated population of just above 50,000. The town is aiming for a variety of entertainment, retail and mixed-use development going forward, intent on being a regional tourism powerhouse.

Little Elm is unique among municipalities along the northern stretches of DFW. It’s heavily residential and doesn’t boast the industry base of some of nearby cities like Frisco and Plano.

However, the town has more shoreline than any other municipality in North Texas, with 66 miles along Lake Lewisville. Little Elm’s economic development strategy is built around the elements that make it unique, targeting retail and entertainment projects to complement its existing features.

In 1999, the town’s population was about 15,000. When Town Manager Matt Mueller took his position in 2012, the town’s population was about 25,000. Full population build-out could be between 75,000 and 100,000, depending on how much land within the Little Elm extraterritorial jurisdiction gets annexed.

“I always joke to friends and colleagues that it’s like playing SimCity for a living because it’s just moving so fast,” Mueller said.

The town’s leadership is anticipating it’ll take another seven to 10 years before the town is fully built-out.

Little Elm has different targets for different parts of the town, he said. In the Lakefront District, the town is prioritizing mixed-use development with more density. Along the Highway 380 corridor, the town is prioritizing development with the density of a north Dallas subdivision.

To the west, town leadership would like to see less density in residential development. The eastern section of the town is largely built-out.

The town’s economic development strategy isn’t as centered around job growth as other areas, Mueller said. While the community is excited about opportunities that create employment, it’s difficult to compete with the likes of Plano or Irving.

Instead, Little Elm is taking a different approach. The town is getting its first hotel, a La Quinta Del Sol Hotel by Wyndham, and an entertainment venue called Tinman Social. Multifamily and retail projects are also in the works.

“I think what we feel really fits into that regional tourism goal of ours is to have more places for people to stay,” Mueller said. “We’re certainly interested in more hotels coming to the area, more unique dining and entertainment venues… Maybe boutique retail and neighborhood services that come along with that, I would say, is what we’re really excited about.”

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A storm system marched eastward Friday, threatening heavy snow in the Midwest and Northeast after spawning likely tornadoes in Texas and Louisiana that damaged homes, businesses, a university campus and left thousands without power.

The storms will threaten the Tennessee and Ohio valleys with high winds and possible tornadoes as they move toward New England, officials said.

Parts of southwestern Michigan and northern Indiana saw rain, freezing rain, sleet, snow and strong wind gusts Friday, according to Indiana Michigan Power.

In Kentucky, Gov. Andy Beshear warned of possible tornadoes and 55- to 65-mph wind gusts after rain moves through the state. Several school districts closed in anticipation.

"The wind will really kick in after the storm moves through," Beshear said Friday. "I don't want people to have confidence that it's going to be safe."

New England was mostly sunny Friday morning ahead of the storm, expected to bring as much as 18 inches of snow and winds gusts as high as 40 mph to parts of New Hampshire and Maine.

The National Weather Service issued a winter storm warning from 10 p.m. Friday until 7 p.m. Saturday and said that a mix of snow, sleet and rain was expected in southern New England and that minor coastal flooding was possible in Massachusetts and Rhode Island.

No deaths or injuries have been reported from the storms that struck Texas and Louisiana on Thursday night after slamming California earlier in the week with as much as 7 feet (2.1 meters) of snow.

The weather service surveyed damage Friday near Pickton, about 80 miles east of Dallas, where it a confirmed tornado struck, according to meteorologist Daniel Huckaby.

Winds of nearly 80 mph were recorded near the Fort Worth suburb of Blue Mound. The roof of an apartment building in the suburb of Hurst was blown away, resident Michael Roberts told KDFW-TV.

"The whole building started shaking. ... The whole ceiling is gone," Roberts said. "It got really crazy."

The Dallas suburb of Richardson asked residents to stop using water after the storm knocked out power to pumping stations. The city said in a statement early Friday that electricity and water service had been restored.

"The city does have a backup power system designed to provide power in case of a widespread outage like the one experienced, but the system failed during the storm," according to the statement. "The cause of the failure is being investigated."

North of Dallas, winds brought down trees, ripped the roof off a grocery store in Little Elm and overturned four 18-wheelers along U.S. Highway 75. Minor injuries were reported, police said.

Buildings at Louisiana State University-Shreveport were damaged, and trees were toppled, spokesperson Erin Smith, but the campus was reopening Friday after being shut down overnight.

More than 72,000 Texas customers and more than 42,000 in Louisiana remained without electricity Friday, according to PowerOutage.us.

In Arkansas, severe weather damaged homes in Pike County, while a possible tornado left minor damage in Grant and Dallas counties, officials said.

Heavy rain was reported in northern Arkansas and southern Missouri, causing flooding in both states.

Police in Hardy, Arkansas, about 115 miles north of Little Rock, asked residents along the Spring River to leave their homes because of flooding, while hail and strong winds were reported in Oklahoma.

Parts of southeastern Missouri were under a flash flood warning Friday after heavy rain swelled streams and flooded low-lying highways with runoff, according to the Missouri State Department of Transportation.