Palmetto High School senior Joshua Levey likes to work with kids. Because of that, he enjoyed his time as a volunteer at the Five Star Baseball Camp at Westminster.
“I worked with kids on fundamentals,” Levey says. “They played a lot of games and I supervised them.”
Levey also taught the six- to eight year-old youngsters the elements of sportsmanship as well. He was selected to work with that age group of kids because they don’t have a lot of self control and so they act up; but Levey had the temperament to deal with them.
“I know how to handle kids very well,” he says. “I don’t know why, but I can relate to them easily and get them in line. I like working with kids, especially with the sport that I love. I remember that was in their shoes not too long ago.”
Levey says he also enjoyed coaching flag football at Pinecrest Elementary as part of the Miami-Dade County Sports program.
“I coached with a couple of friends and I really liked it,” Levey says. “I love football so much. It was a competitive league and we lost one game. I enjoyed calling the plays. It was interesting to be on the coaching end of football rather than the playing end.”
Levey worked at the camp for two consecutive summers. However, last summer worked as an intern at the Beber-Silverstein Advertising Agency and had to forego his coaching duties.
“I shadowed one of their leader partners, Leslie Pantin,” Levey says. “I sat in a meeting with him.”
Levey worked as an intern with the agency for three weeks, and then participated in a week-long journalism program at the University of Florida.
“I took a writing class from a college professor,” he says. “We had to put together our own pieces of work. We learned about the modern day sources of the media.”
The students attended two lectures a day and worked on their assignments.
“At every lecture there were three people (covering the event); one would work Facebook, one Twitter and the other one would write a summary of the lecture that would be posted on the blog,” Levey says, adding that Twitter has taken over social media. “For example, if Barack Obama was making a speech in Miami, all the reporters would be tweeting about it every five seconds.”
During the school year, Levey’s afterschool schedule is taken up by baseball and working on the school paper, but he has made time for membership in many honor societies, including the National Honor Society, Mu Alpha Theta and the English Honor Society. He is also secretary of the Jewish Student Union.
Levey plays first base and outfield for the Palmetto varsity baseball team. This fall, he was a starter and often was the designated hitter. Levey thinks the team to do well this year.
“We lost a lot of seniors, but I think we could be pretty good and we could win districts this year, which we haven’t done in a few years,” he says.
Levey is the sports editor for The Panther, the school paper. He began as a staff writer when he was in the 11th grade and worked his way up the ladder.
“At first, I was really strong on my writing, but I have really picked up newspaper design and I really enjoy it,” he says.
Levey’s writing is so strong that he won the coveted Most Outstanding Junior Journalism Student award last year. Levey says he wants to be a professional journalist.
“My dream is to write for ESPN,” he says.
Levey has applied to several colleges that have top journalism programs, including the University of Florida, Syracuse, the University of North Carolina, Wisconsin, Florida State and Wake Forrest.
By Linda Rodriguez Bernfeld
