The St. Thomas Love Your Melon campus crew competed with groups of university students from across the country for the chance to attend a Love Your Melon national conference. Six members of the St. Thomas crew will stay at a private resort in Beaver, Utah with a total of 160 Love Your Melon brand ambassadors.

The challenge, which ran from November to February, was presented by Love Your Melon founders and St. Thomas alumni Zachary Quinn and Brian Keller, who will join the students at the conference.

Senior and St. Thomas Love Your Melon crew captain Jack Vickers is impressed with the brand’s quick growth after Quinn and Keller created it in an entrepreneurship class at St. Thomas in 2012. Love Your Melon sells beanies and other apparel and donates half of its proceeds on every product to charities that support children with cancer.

“The connections that the brand has made is unbelievable. It started out as a college thing, but it is crazy to see how much it has spread,” Vickers said. “Feeling like you are a part of something that big and growing is exciting.”

Half the attendees of the conference – called the APEX Experience – were chosen due to their crew’s ranking based on online sales. The crew with the highest sales during the competition will bring all 20 of its crew members to the conference. Vickers, freshman Mikayla DeNicola and seniors Hannah Gleason and Sammi Cole will attend the conference.

Cole, the St. Thomas crew’s public relations manager, said the challenge sparked the competitiveness of its members.

“Only the top three college crews in each region would get the chance to go to APEX, so we were really motivated to sell!” Cole said. “We really had to spread the word and reach out to people using social media.”

The other 80 Love Your Melon ambassadors were chosen from individual submissions answering the question: “If you could do anything to change the world, what would you do?” Senior Jessica Brown and sophomore Jack Flynn were chosen to attend the APEX Experience because of their submissions.

Flynn was humbled to have his submission chosen and is excited for the opportunity to attend the event with his crew’s leadership members.

“Being selected out of a large group of passionate, creative and successful young people is unexplainable. I know there were so many other awesome submissions, so I just want to make the most of the experience,” said Flynn.

St. Thomas ranked third in the Midwest and fifth overall in the APEX Challenge by earning 1,533 credits from online sales. Credits accumulated when customers on the Love Your Melon website entered the name of the campus crew at checkout. The U of M ranked first overall in the competition and will bring its entire Love Your Melon crew to the event, and Minnesota State University Mankato and Iowa State will also attend.

Vice captain Gleason has enjoyed seeing the hard work of the St. Thomas group pay off.

“It’s cool to see it all come together. No matter what school you come from, you have worked your butt off,” Gleason said. “Knowing that other crews have noticed how hard our St. Thomas crew has worked is really amazing.”

The brand ambassadors will participate in a variety of events at the APEX Experience, held March 7-10. Some activities include roundtable discussions, speaker events and conferences about the brand, as well as snowboarding, skiing and other outdoor activities.

Crew secretary DeNicola said she is looking forward to the opportunity to meet other students who are passionate about Love Your Melon.

“There are over 8,000 crew members in Love Your Melon, and although we are all electronically connected, we rarely get the chance to meet other crews that aren’t in our region,” DeNicola said. “The APEX Experience will give us the opportunity to come together to collaborate, grow and adventure with passionate members from all over the country.”

In addition to selling apparel, the Love Your Melon crews spend time visiting hospitals and events supporting cancer research. Wearing superhero costumes while visiting children in hospitals has become a staple of Love Your Melon. The St. Thomas crew in particular meets often with the brand’s founders and workers in the Love Your Melon warehouse to help package and ship the products.

St. Thomas crew member Brown said she feels lucky to be so close to the brand’s home location. She is also excited for the opportunity to interact and share stories with other crews.

“We’re fortunate to be in the Twin Cities and have gotten to meet so many other crew members here since LYM asks for us to help out frequently, but it’ll be cool to meet all the other crew members,” Brown said.

Vickers said he is looking forward to reflecting on the impact the Love Your Melon crews make as they continue to support cancer research and children who are battling cancer.

“We know the mission and what we are working for, but there are times when I’m not as aware of it as I should be, because being a part of this is just fun too,” Vickers said. “I’m honored to have these experiences, but it’s even cooler to take a step back and think how much you’re affecting others and people we don’t even know.”

Claire Noack can be reached at noac8702@stthomas.edu.