Mini-THON is kicking off its fundraising goals with the Snow King competition this week.

The Snow King is a different version of King of Hearts. Instead of being a Valentine’s Day celebration, the Snow King event is bringing awareness and funds to research childhood cancers but is still collecting canned goods to the Southern York County Food Bank.

The candidates competing for the crown includes seniors: Lee Cook, Nate Campbell, Chase Summers, Ethan Daviau, Hayden Folfas, Michael Koval, Dean Lochte and Daylon Gohn.

Senior Hayden Folfas is excited to be in the competition and hopes to collect many donations by the end of the week.

“Basically, you have to collect canned goods or monetary donations. For every dollar you get donated, you get three points. Depending on the canned goods’ size, you can get half a point or three points,” said Folfas. “By the end of the week, I should be well over two hundred [points]. I know I already have a good amount of cans, and I’m definitely getting some money from businesses around town.”

In order to bring attention to the Snow King competition, Mini-THON has teamed up with student council to host a spirit week, along with a pep rally on Friday, January 13. The spirit days are themed to represent Mini-THON and supporting cancer awareness.

Throughout the spirit week, students are persuaded to make donations to the candidate that they want to see win the title of the Snow King. All students need to do is bring in canned goods or non-perishable items and place them in the candidate’s box, which can be found in the auditorium lobby. Money should be taken to the main office.

Spanish teacher Heather Walker played a huge part in setting up the Snow King competition and hopes to bring in a lot of donations for Mini-THON.

“The students are competing to get the most donations of canned goods and money to donate to local community services, and all of the money donations will go to the Four Diamonds, which is an organization that fights kids’ cancer,” said Walker.

The candidates view it as a friendly competition and acknowledge that in the end it will all be about the donations made.

“I’m good friends with all of the other candidates. I know it’s supposed to be competitive, but it’s also for a good cause. By the end of the day, it doesn’t matter who wins. It’s all about the cause,” said Folfas.

Senior Michael Koval joined the campaign when a friend convinced him to and believes the candidates are doing a good job with bringing in donations.

“They’re all good guys. It’s all about why they’re doing it. It’s all for charity,” said Koval.

Due to future events in March planned by Mini-THON, the Snow King has replaced the King of Hearts in order to bring in donations a month earlier. Some of these donations will go to setting up these events.

“[Replacing the King of Hearts] was really about timing because the events for Mini-THON is in March, and we needed to do a kick off in January to raise as much money as we could. So we needed the kids to do the competition and raise money in January instead of February this year,” said Walker.

Students believe that this year’s Snow King competition is a refreshing change from the usual King of Hearts that takes place every February.

“I like the Snow King format better. They’re both pretty similar, and you can compare them pretty easily. But depending on how this whole pep rally thing works out and how many donations we bring in, it should be really cool to see how it all turns out,” said Koval. “I think it’s a good change. I like to see Mini-THON come back, since I participated in it during middle school.”

The candidate with the most donations in their box by the end of the week will be crowned the Snow King at the pep rally.