After being assigned the task of creating a company for an entrepreneurship class, a group of St. Thomas students secured endorsements from two professional athletes with ties to Minnesota.

Students Sydney Groteboer, Morgan Dammann and John Vecere created their own athletic apparel brand, In Progress, as a part of the Foundations of Entrepreneurship course.

In effort to promote its project, the group was able to get Minnesota Twins baseball player Joe Mauer and Philadelphia 76’s basketball player Kris Humphries to be photographed while wearing the brand.

Groteboer said that the photos gave the company credibility.

The group used personal connections to get the photos. Vecere’s father works with Joe Mauer’s brother Billy at Mauer Chevrolet, and Groteboer’s father is friends with Kris Humphries’ neighbor.

“I was impressed,” Foundations of Entrepreneurship professor Alec Johnson said. “If their product or their idea behind it wasn’t as developed, it might have been a little premature.”

Due to the athletes’ strict contracts with the leagues, the students are required to take down the promotional photos when the semester is finished.

The three students chose to create an athletic apparel brand because it represented their interests.

“We are all super passionate about fitness,” Grotetboer said. “It really fits with all of our personalities.”

The brand sells men’s long sleeve shirts and women’s tank tops and hopes to expand to men’s tanks and windbreakers in the future.

Groteboer said that the name In Progress came from the idea that they wanted to represent the journey of a healthy transformation for anyone.

“We came up with the idea that fitness brands should promote that fitness journeys are not constant, and people struggle with it,” Groteboer said. “ We disagree with tag lines like “just do it” and thought that those made it seem like working out was easy and quick.”

Groteboer said that the entrepreneurship project is very open-ended and focuses on allowing the students to do what they want to. The only requirements to the project entail earning at least $500 in revenue and creating an active website for the brand.

“I don’t hold their hand through this process,” Johnson said. “This course certainly impacts their critical thinking and problem solving skills.”

Johnson said that the project is reliant on the students and their willingness to apply these skill sets to a social issue which helps them to develop confidence overall.

“They have to define what success looks like by setting goals,” Johnson said. “With this (project) the kind of abstract and romantic idea of entrepreneurship is within reach for them as a career choice.”

Groteboer said that the group plans to keep the company going throughout its time at St. Thomas.

“We thought that we are always ’In Progress’ and should embrace the hardship of it,” Groteboer said. “It feels great to accomplish things that you’ve worked really hard for.”

Ava Diaz can be reached at diaz7981@stthomas.edu