Inside HOKIE SPORTS | Vol. 14 No. 3 | December 2021

inside.hokiesports.com 23 Kwamina Vandyke , known as Devin Vandyke when he played football for Virginia Tech, had his life planned out before stepping on campus at Virginia Tech. As a highly rated recruit out of Northern Virginia, he was going to follow in the footsteps of Michael Vick, DeAngelo Hall, Eddie Royal and other Hokie legends from the Commonwealth to make a name on the gridiron and play at the next level. However, as injuries plagued his playing career, Vandyke had to find a new path for his life after football. Joining his brother Ronny on the Hokies football team, Vandyke played for Tech from 2012 to 2014. He was named to the ACC All- Academic Team after his freshman year while majoring in business. Following his Tech career, Vandyke got his MBA from Hampton University and accepted a consulting job with Deloitte. After three years with the company, Vandyke decided to leave to pursue his true dreams. Vandyke’s situation is not a unique one, plenty of student-athletes must find a new passion after their playing days are over. But Vandyke doesn’t have just one passion, he’s someone that wants to experience all the world has in store for him. It’s that curiosity, that drive to be great at many things, that has led him to start his own business, Millennial Mayhem. “I have a number of passions,” Vandyke said. “I like to think of myself as a renaissance man or multi-disciplinary human.” Starting out as a travel blog where Vandyke shared his many experiences abroad, including traveling to 13 countries in 2019 alone, Millennial Mayhem has adapted as Vandyke has grown and learned of new passions. One of those is to change the travel fashion game. Building on that idea, Vandyke launched The MEYHAM Collection, a set of luxury travel bags for the new age, working professional. “Coach [Bud] Foster always used to say we’re on a business trip anytime we would travel,” Vandyke said. “At 19 years old, you’ve never been on a business trip before. “From travelling, I realized there’s a gap in what executive travel looks like in terms of what type of luggage I would want. In the mayhem of travel, how can I keep my convenience and still keep it cool, keep it sexy, keep it luxury. I don’t know of a company that’s branding for guys like me, so I was like, I’ll just create it myself.” Vandyke currently offers three different luxury travel bags on his website, themayhemcollection.com . “Honestly, I believe I am what fashion will be in the next 10 years,” Vandyke said. “I believe I have a concept and a brand that millennials, especially millennials of color, need. I believe I’m dismantling the idea of what masculinity looks like, what fashion looks like, what professionalism looks like, what enjoyment looks like, and I want to continue to push that with Millennial Mayhem.” Another passion of Vandyke’s stemmed from his Ghanian heritage and love for the game of American football. In early 2020, Vandyke, along with his childhood friend and current Green Bay Packers’ linebacker Oren Burks, traveled to Ghana to start an American football academy in the African country. “Oh man, it was surreal,” Vandyke said of the experience. “It was exciting. I’ve always wanted, as I build and climb, I wanted to reach back. I think having the ability to have friends that are in the NFL, have a platform, and then also use where I come from and merge those was something I’ve always looked forward to.” The son of Ghanian immigrants, Vandyke visited Ghana when he was a kid, but then football took over his life. His trip last year was the first time he returned to his family’s home country since he stopped playing. The inspiration for starting a camp there, he says, was to give a new group of people the chance to play the game he loves. “I believe that the difference between me and the young boys selling tomatoes on the streets in Ghana or the young black kid in a lower income neighborhood in the Unites States that wants to play football is time and opportunity,” Vandyke said. “I’ve always believed that even when I got recruited, even when I started on scholarship, it was just time and opportunity that separated me from the next guy.” Vandyke and Burks, an alumnus of Vanderbilt, hope to take another trip to Ghana in the near future to continue to build on the camps. “In the spring, I’m hoping to bring other Hokie alum that are in the [NFL] now,” Vandyke said. “Also, maybe [Oren’s] Vanderbilt alum and then a few guys that have played with him with the Packers. Every year, we’ll just build on the more funding we get to build an academy and a football camp to really teach guys the fundamentals of American football but also mentorships and opportunities to school abroad.” Once again, Vandyke merged one passion with another. While in Ghana setting up the football camps, Vandyke was also planning to produce a documentary on the experience. His interest in cinematography developed while at Tech. “I tore my ACL my redshirt freshman year, so I was just bedridden for a month,” Vandyke said. “I started watching film and started watching movies, and I started to really appreciate the production of movies. I took an intro to cinema class here and then I minored in it. Cinema, film and creative direction is a huge passion of mine.” Vandyke produced a trailer of a potential documentary on the creation of an American football academy in Ghana from his visit last year. His hope is to secure funding and a production team to fulfill that dream. 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