quick hits

Detroit Country Day School 
senior girls soccer star Elle 
Hartje was named to the 
Division 2 All-State first 
team.
An honorable mention 
All-State choice when she 
was a sophomore, Hartje 
was a three-sport star 
at Country Day. She also 
played hockey and tennis 
for the Yellowjackets.
Hartje will move on 
this fall to Yale University, 
where she’
ll play hockey 
and soccer.

BY STEVE STEIN 

sports

Two umpires who work in Inter-Congregational Men’
s Club 
Summer Softball League games were honored recently by 
USA Softball.
 Barry “Rat” Lepofsky and Thomas Donovan each 
received an award for 40 years of softball umpiring. 
They were saluted during an annual breakfast for softball 
umpires hosted by USA Softball of Metro Detroit.
 Lepofsky was inducted into the Michigan USSSA Hall of 
Fame in its umpire category in 1993.

David Vinsky is off 
to a solid start in his 
minor league baseball 
career.
 The 15th-round 
draft choice last 
month of the St. Louis 
Cardinals has already 
been promoted by the 
Cardinals from the rookie league Johnson 
City team to short-season Class A State 
College.
 In 13 total minor league games through 
July 8, Vinsky was batting .269 with two 
home runs, eight RBI, three doubles and 
nine runs scored.
 Vinsky is a 6-foot, 198-pound outfielder 
who starred at Farmington Hills Harrison 
High School and Northwood University.

Make it three straight state championships and eight 
state titles since 2003 for Birmingham Marian High 
School girls soccer coach Barry Brodsky.
 The Mustangs achieved the three-peat June 14 by 
defeating Grand Rapids Forest Hills Northern 2-1 in dou-
ble overtime in the Division 2 state championship game 
in East Lansing.
 
 Marian is now the seventh girls soccer program in the 
state to win three consecutive state titles.

STEVE STEIN CONTRIBUTING WRITER
J

ason Boschan won’
t stop running.
The Bloomfield Hills native 
is one of about 1,000 people on 
the planet who has run a marathon 
on all seven continents and run in 
all six major marathons — Boston, 
London, Chicago, New York, Berlin 
and Tokyo.
Now the 40-year-old Charlotte, 
N.C., resident is on a mission to run 
a half-marathon in each of the 50 
states.
Boschan doesn’
t run to compete.
“I don’
t train. I just run. I think 
I have respectable times in races 
because I’
m so motivated,” he said.

So why does he run? Because of his 
grandfather, pediatrician Dr. Louis 
Heyman of Bloomfield Hills, who 
died in 2013 at age 88 from dementia.
Boschan’
s driving passion is to raise 
funds and awareness for Alzheimer’
s 
disease research in honor of his 
grandfather, whom he called Papa.
Boschan’
s cause is called Run4Papa.
“Watching my grandfather lose his 
ability to communicate because of 
dementia was absolutely heartbreak-
ing,” Boschan said.
All of Boschan’
s trips for races are 
self-funded. One-hundred percent 
of contributions to his cause fund 

Bloomfi
 eld Hills man travels around the world to 
raise money for Alzheimer’
s disease research.

Marathon
Man

research at Northwestern University’
s 
Mesulam Center for Cognitive 
Neurology and Alzheimer’
s Disease.
Boschan has raised about $243,000 
since 2012.
The next race on Boschan’
s sched-
ule is the Mount Rushmore Half-
Marathon on Sept. 21 in Keystone, 
S.D.
The date and venue couldn’
t be 
more appropriate.
Boschan’
s grandfather died Sept. 
21, 2013. This will be Boschan’
s 21st 
half-marathon in the 21st state. His 
goal is to raise $2,121.
“The one place my grandfather 
wanted to visit before he passed away 
was Mount Rushmore,” Boschan said. 
“Unfortunately, because of his frag-
ile mental state due to dementia, we 
were unable to get him there.”
Boschan’
s wife, Carrie Boschan, 
and his parents, James and Shelley, 
Boschan will be in South Dakota with 
him for what will be an emotional 
half-marathon.
Boschan gets the word out about 

his cause mainly through 
social media.
Boschan’
s website 
(run4papa.com) has about 
3,500 monthly visitors.
He writes a blog, cre-
ates two- to three-minute 
YouTube videos of his races, 
and he communicates through his 
Facebook, Twitter and Instagram 
accounts.
His videos have gotten more than 
50,000 views and he has more than 
5,000 followers on each of his social 
media platforms. His database of fol-
lowers includes more than 2,000 per-
sonal acquaintances and more than 
500,000 through Northwestern.
After never running a race in his 
life, Boschan has run in 12 marathons 
since 2000, including two before 
Run4Papa was founded. They were 
the London Marathon in 2000 and 
the New York City Marathon in 2010.
Boschan had to stop at mile 25.8 in 
the 2013 Boston Marathon because 
of the bombings at the finish line of 
the 26.2-mile race. He ran the Big 5 
Marathon in South Africa in 2013 on 
an animal reserve.
He ran the Great Wall of China 
Marathon in 2012, ascending and 
descending 5,164 steps, and the 
Antarctica Marathon in below-freez-

LEFT: Jason Boschan 

at the Great Wall 

of China Marathon. 

BELOW: Jason Boschan 

and Alex Turoff at the 

Antarctica Marathon.

20 July 18 • 2019
jn