Toms River Teacher Runs for Those Who Can’t

Jamie Blondina is a 25-year from Toms River who has been an athlete for most of her life.  At Toms River High School South she played soccer and basketball but it was lacrosse in which she truly shined and continued while at Rowan University.

Blondina ranked 7^th in lacrosse program history in points scored when she graduated in 2015, earned All-Conference and All Region honors and received the Joy Solomon Leadership Award.

Not long after that she was hired as a health and physical education teacher at Toms River High School East where she also coaches freshman girl’s lacrosse and soccer and junior varsity basketball.

Blondina is busy, especially when add in the training she is doing for a fundraiser this summer in which she and about 30 others will team up to run 4,000 miles from San Francisco to Boston in just 49 days.

It’s all for the Ulman Cancer Fund for Young Adults (UCF) which provides support and encouragement to young adults and their loved ones impacted by cancer.  The 4K for Cancer program will find the group not only running across the country but handing out scholarships, visiting and delivering care packages to cancer patients receiving treatment and raising awareness through various educational events. Since its inception the Ulman Cancer Fund has raised $15 million with $5 million of that coming directly from the 4K for Cancer program.

Blondina has never participated in a long distance run and is going through high intensity interval training for about an hour a day, six days a week.  She is basically in a program similar to someone training for a marathon which makes sense when you consider she will run an average of 6 to 16 miles each day during the 49 day trek across the country.

As you might imagine there is more than just the running challenge to this. Jamie has a fundraising goal of $7,000. So far she’s raised around $1,700.  Donations are tax-deductible. Here's a link to her  fundraising page and the 4K for Cancer website.

As she wrote in an email “I run for those that can.t”