Palmetto High senior Jason Weiss has turned his hobby into a business. Weiss is a huge University of Miami Hurricanes fan, so he began making videos and putting them on his You Tube Channel, CaneFreak2001.
“I have more than 2.5 million views of my videos and over 4,000 subscribers,” Weiss says. “When I started out, I just wanted to learn how to make videos and then to make a slide show.” Some of his videos are even posted on the UM website.
“The head coach, Al Golden, he shows my videos to the players,” Weiss says. “All the coaches love my videos too.”
He has a variety of videos on the site, including videos to pump up enthusiasm and highlight game videos. Some players have told him they watch his videos before big games and others have requested he make new highlight videos for them. Those highlight videos of individual players and have led to making highlight videos for area high school athletes and some schools through his company Performance in Motion.
He has created introductory videos for Columbus and Norland high schools and he created the introduction video for the Miami Hurricanes baseball team.
Weiss also plays wide receiver for the Palmetto football team. He spent the ninth and 10th grade on the junior varsity team and joined the varsity last year. Weiss began football in the Pop Warner League when he was in the third grade and played through middle school at the Kendall Boys and Girls Club.
Sports have always been important to him, so in high school he volunteered to coach basketball at Pinecrest Elementary for Dade County Sports. The original plan was to coach football, but when there weren’t enough kids, he switched to basketball. Weiss says it was a good experience for him.
“I developed better relationships with younger children; I learned how to cope with them,” he says. “I felt I had an impact with them, not just with basketball. I taught them lessons, like how to behave properly.”
His community service work includes going with his mother and some friends to shelters and where they hosted birthday parties for residents.
“I’d bring a football, my mom would bring coloring books,” he says. “Another lady would color with the girls. We would play sports for a day and bring pizza. They loved it.”
Weiss also devoted some time to the Mitt Romney campaign, going door-todoor and making phone calls.
“I was somewhat influenced by my dad,” he says. “He took me there one day and I started to help out.”
At Palmetto, in addition to playing football, he’s the treasurer of the Social Science Honor Society and a member of the National Honor Society, Mu Alpha Theta, the Science National Honor Society and Future Business Leaders of America.
“I went to the state competition,” he says. “I got third place in District and went to states, but unfortunately I didn’t make it to nationals.”
Weiss had a finance internship over the summer at Brightscape Corporation, a certified financial planning company owned by his father. Weiss and a friend were taught about income statements and balance sheets, and given a small project on the housing market.
“We had to forecast housing,” Weiss says.”He lectured us on finance and accounting; what finance is like.”
Weiss says his primary focus in college will be economics, possibly with a minor in finance or sport management.
By Linda Rodriguez Bernfeld
