 The NCAA Final Four will be held in Minnesota this year and with it a new reading initiative has been started to promote the upcoming tournament. Our reporter Rachel Johnson has more. The read to the Final Four kicked off today in Bemidji at Northern Elementary School. College basketball players visited the elementary to read to third-grade students. VSU students, basketball players, girl basketball players came to read with our third graders and kind of a jump start to inspire reading. The initiative was started to engage youth and leave a lasting positive impact in the region where the upcoming Final Four will be hosted. When we start now and then in January they take the top 68 teams in the state of Minnesota I should say schools that have the most average minutes read as a school and they're actually put them in a bracket just like the Final Four puts in it gets in a bracket. The initiative includes free access to a digital library of almost 6,000 books. The kickoff today was a huge success and brought kids from across three different third-grade classrooms together to read. Yeah kids are always just fired up anytime I think they get an opportunity for you know especially college student athletes to come in they just kind of light up so it's great to see these kids get to interact with our young women. I like reading to kids I love kids so it was a good opportunity just to encourage reading and being here to support the community. The program focuses on third grade a time where students are in a transitional period when it comes to reading. We start as we're learning to read and then it becomes to where we start to read to learn so it's a big transition can be tough for some kids so it's a great time and this will be a great way to motivate them. In April during the NCAA Final Four week prizes will be awarded to the winning school as well as individual readers that have logged the most reading minutes. It was the last event. Reporting from Bemidji, Rachel Johnson, Lakeland News. Over 190 schools are participating in the read to the Final Four. The number will be cut down to 68 for the bracket style reading tournament in January. If you enjoyed this segment of Lakeland News please consider making a tax-deductible contribution to Lakeland PBS.