If there is a club that takes its name seriously, it would be the Midwest Elite.

The Illinois-based club, headed by founder Ralph Gesualdo, seeks to attract a specific type of athlete. If you want to spend part of your summer playing softball or swimming or attending volleyball camps, the Midwest Elite isn’t for you.

“We typically are looking for girls that are committed to basketball,” Gesualdo said. “We’re not looking for two-sport athletes. We’re looking for girls who we feel, and they feel, are looking for opportunities to play at the next level. We’re not a club that just looks for girls to be better high school players. We’re looking to prepare them for the next level.”

That doesn’t, in itself, make Midwest Elite entirely unique. But few programs are in a position to be as choosy as Midwest Elite, which determines its number of teams based on the quality of players it attracts.

“We typically have three to four teams,” Gesualdo said. “We won’t take someone in our program that we don’t think has the ability to play at the next level. We base our numbers on the talent that comes to us. We’ve had as many as five teams. The minimum is three. We turn away more players than we actually accept into the program.”

Midwest Elite currently carries three teams and approximately 26 players.

“We’re not a program that’s about putting 15 players on a team and making money and going to tournaments that are based on price,” he said. “We put minimum numbers on our teams. We want our girls to play, and we try to put them in the right tournaments.”

Gesualdo’s program is four years old. He was one of the founders of Full Package before breaking off to start his own club, feeling the need to participate in tournaments with greater competition than what his old club had been facing.

He connected with Blue Star’s Chris Mennig from the club’s inception, providing Gesualdo an avenue to compete in high-level US Junior Nationals events.

“Since we’ve moved over to Blue Star, we’ve been able to play in the Blue Star tournaments and the Nike tournaments, which gives us the opportunity to play better teams and gives our girls more exposure,” Gesualdo said. “And that’s what we’re all about — the exposure.

“My programs have always been about the girls. We don’t make money with Elite; we’re not for profit. A number of girls are on scholarship with our program. We just want the girls to get the most exposure they can.”

He readily acknowledges that exposure is a higher priority than winning games.

“When we talk about success, we don’t measure it in wins and losses. We measure it in Division I scholarships that our girls receive,” Gesualdo said.

That might sound like a loser’s lament. Far from it. With top-level talent and solid coaching, Midwest Elite consistently makes an impact during tournaments.

“Even though our goals are based on exposure and not necessarily on wins and losses, our program has been pretty successful the last four years. As far as players in the last four years, we’ve probably placed 35 Division I players. The last three years we’ve had three Gatorade Players of the Year play with us, starting with Jewell Loyd (now at Notre Dame), Samantha Logic (Iowa) and Taya Reimer (Notre Dame). And we actually think we’ve got another one this year in Gabby Ortiz. We’ve had great success in tournaments,” including multiple top-four finishes at Nike Nationals and multiple titles at the USJN Nationals in Washington D.C.

Gesualdo’s current pipeline is flush with talent. Ortiz, the 2014 point guard and recent Oklahoma commit from Wisconsin leads the list.

“A special kid and a special talent,” Gesualdo said. “She’s one of the reasons why I do what I do.”

She has plenty of company.

Jade Owens — “a true point guard,” Gesualdo said  — from Fenwick High School in Chicago has seen her stock rise among recruiters in recent months.

Kortney Dunbar, a 6-foot-1 left-hander from Edwardsville, Ill., has attracted attention from BCS schools. “She can play anywhere from 3 through 5 on the floor,” Gesualdo said.

Sisters Kysre (2016) and Kalabrya Gondrezick (2015) from Benton Harbor, Mich., are guards with outstanding reputations. “They’re going to be special wherever they go,” Gesualdo said.

The younger grades are headlined by post Ali Andrews, a 2016 “tenacious, tough kid,” Gesualdo said, and 2018 point guard Lauren Lee. She’s 5-8 and is “as talented a seventh-grade kid as I’ve ever seen,” Gesualdo said. “She’s a point guard. If she has any kind of growth spurt, she could end up being a 6-foot, 6-1 point guard.”

The roster of talented players runs much longer. But the bottom line is simple.

“We’re loaded with a lot of gifted players that not only help us this year,” he said, “but will keep us extremely competitive in the years to come.”