College basketball coaches are always looking for a leg up in finding ways to sign the best players.

University of Mary coaches Fred Fridley and Juno Pintar, who lead the women's and men's programs respectively, found something to make their quests a little easier.

An Every Child is Important (ECI)Select tournament will be held at U-Mary on April 17-19.

ECI is an organization that is committed to teaching basketball skills to high school players. ECI serves more than 140 boys and girls players from North Dakota, South Dakota, Eastern Montana and Western Minnesota.

ECI players receive instruction from coaches who are made up of college and top high school coaches. Players are divided up into teams.

Pintar sees the ECI Select event as a chance to bring players to the U-Mary campus.

"It gets them in our gym,"Pintar said. "It's a chance to develop relations with them."

ECI Select tournaments gives athletes more exposure to college recruiters. ECIruns two of the largest college-recruiting events in North Dakota Spring Preview in April and Dakota Hoopfest in June.

"Augustana has (an ECI tournament) at their place every year,"said Joe Kittell, an ECI coach who is from Garrison. "The kids come on campus, and they pick the kids they want to talk to. It's already an on-campus visit. They can pull them into the office, show them the dorms and walk them around campus."

More than 70 ECI alumni are currently playing college basketball. The last three North Dakota Mr. Basketball winners played ECI ball Travis Mertens (University of North Dakota), Brian Qvale (University of Montana) and Austin Dufault (University of Colorado).

Fridley believes the ECI tournament will help expose regional athletes to U-Mary. Fridley said it can be a challenge to get out-of-state athletes to visit Bismarck.

"Especially a city athlete or one in Western Montana," Fridley said.

The ECI tournament can help Fridley follow target athletes.

"It helps us show commitment to that athlete," he said, "and how much we want them as part of our program. As a head coach I'll follow close to six girls the entire summer and watch them play. That's just so they can see you there."

Kittell said ECI chose to host a tournament at U-Mary because of the positive relationship the coaches have built with the ECI athletes it has recruited through the years.

"They're a school that wants to bring students on campus and get the best students in the area to play,"Kittell said. "We want to show off our players in the western part of the state. We want to tap into business and hotels in town that really like basketball."

To learn more about ECI, go to http://www.eciyouth.org.