Many sports fans have imagined turning their favorite pastime into a business, but very few can say they’ve succeeded by their senior year of college.

Luke Elders, a senior in the Olin Business School, and his partners can make such a lofty claim; they started the Heartland Fight League for Mixed Martial Arts in 2010 and are preparing for its biggest event on Saturday.

Elders, a former amateur MMA fighter, suffered a knee injury that took him from competition. But the following fall, he developed a way to remain involved in MMA through his coursework in the business school.

“I was enrolled in the Hatchery, which is a business planning class in the business school, and I got together with my friends, and we decided we were going to write a business plan about starting a promotion,” Elders said.

With help from professor Clifford Holekamp, Elders and fellow senior Will Davidson, Hartland’s current Chief Financial Officer, spent the remainder of the semester and winter break developing  an amateur MMA promotion company and planned its first event for March 2010.

The young company experienced an initial struggle to attract fighters to their competition.

“At first, it was us cold calling some gyms and saying ‘Hey, we’re going to be good some day, trust us.’ That’s why we almost didn’t get it off the ground at first, the only reason we did was that I knew a couple of gym owners from when I fought,” Elders said. “I don’t know why, but they trusted us enough to give us some fighters, and we ended up having seven fights in the first show.”

In the interim between that event and the group’s next fights, Heartland underwent changes in approach and leadership. Davidson, choosing to take a minority role in the company, sold the majority of his shares to Saint Louis University senior Joe Clavin, a friend Elders met through an internship with College Works Painting. According to Elders, after the first fight, the group worked to improve credibility with local gyms.

“Since then, I think we’ve done a really professional job with how we handle the fighters, and a lot of people saw that we had good match-ups. We just built credibility so with the next fight, there were a couple more people who called and said ‘hey, I saw what you did, I’d like to be involved.’ That’s progressed and worked it’s way up to [Saturday’s] fight,” Elders said. “Most gym owners in the area at this point really know who we are; they respect us a lot.”

Heartland also worked to tailor its events to the needs of amateur fighters; Elders used his prior knowledge as a fighter to attract new athletes to events.

“As an amateur athlete, especially in Mixed Marital Arts, the reason a lot of these guys are fighting for free is for the recognition and I guess, in a sense, the glory of it all,” Elders said. “So I just kind of took a lot of things that I know I would have enjoyed and built credibility with fighters that way, and I think that’s just helped tremendously.”

Stepping Up, the largest event for Heartland thus far, will take place Saturday night at the St. Charles Convention Center. Eighteen fighters are scheduled to compete, and the group has arranged appearances from ESPN radio personalities Bob Stelton and D’Marco Farr, a former player for the St. Louis Rams. In addition, the event features several food and drink specials for attendees.

According to Clavin, one of the biggest obstacles to Heartland’s owners is the struggle to offer premium entertainment without incurring major expenses.

“The biggest challenge with this event is growth because we have the same 800 to 1000 people to our past three events, but we need to try and break those numbers and grab the rest of St. Louis and get them to our events…coming up with ways to grow the company without having an acute, huge expense column on our balance sheet [is a challenge],” Clavin said.

Clavin also explained that Heartland hopes to occupy a unique niche in the world of MMA fighting. Although the UFC and Strikeforce dominate the professional arena of the sport, Heartland hopes to become the premiere league for “minor league” MMA fighters. To work toward this goal, the owners have worked to distinguish Heartland from other amateur leagues, which described as having a lack of professionalism.

“There’s no high school, college, or minor league MMA…we’re trying to attract fighters to our organization, and they can use us as a spring broad to bigger and better things because there is no stepping stone for MMA fighters currently,” Clavin said.

Heartland Fight League’s “Stepping Up” begins tomorrow at 7 p.m. at the St. Charles Convention Center. Ticket prices range from $30 for general admission to $75 for VIP and cage-side seats.