The spring update for the 2016 girls IMG Academy 150 is out today, and while the top ten remain the same, they haven’t rested on their laurels, but have been busy landing verbal commitments to top college programs and continue to make their mark in the ECNL. The top player in this class, Mallory Pugh, recently announced her verbal commitment to UCLA, and is spending significant time away from her club training with the U.S. U20 Women’s National Team.

It’s high season for colleges to snag the interest of the top players in the country on the girls’ side, and more than a few players have made their interest public in the last several months. Couple those verbal commitments with their level of play and our scouting recommendations, and several players have significantly climbed in our rankings. FC Bucks goalkeeper Erin Seppi, a Maryland verbal, has helped her team to a 11-2-3 record good for second in the Northeast Conference Metro Division, and has recorded 13 shutouts in league play. Seppi recently made her verbal to Maryland, and climbs from No. 139 to No. 72. TSC Hurricane midfielder Jennifer Byers climbs from No. 100 to No. 72, has contributed eight goals and five assists this season and verbally committed to Texas A&M just before the new year. Heat FC players Emily Martin, now at No. 127, and Lexington Magliarditi at No. 125 recently announced verbals to top programs Texas and Duke, respectively.

In an effort to recognize players from Canada highly recruited by programs in the U.S., we have reached out to college coaches and Canadian clubs, adding Norwest SC midfielder Jessie Fleming (among others) as a result. Fleming travelled with the full Canadian national team to Brazil in December and got her feet wet in last week’s friendly against the U.S. WNT. She was also named captain of the Canadian U17 World Cup squad, entering our rankings at No. 21.

More: Commitments

Not only has the IMG Academy 150 received scrutiny, but the regional lists have been updated as well. Keep checking back this week as we unveil newcomers such as World Class forward/left back Amber Rose Alfonzo, West Coast FC midfielder and Ohio State verbal Kaylee Karsh, Birmingham United forward Megan Young and many more.

As far as how we arrive at the rankings, it’s no simple task.

We keep a national database of players as the starting point for our rankings (if you’re not in it, enter a profile here).

We track an extensive list of selections to national team camps and other honors including USSF Development Academy (Boys), ECNL (Girls), and U.S. Youth Soccer National League event and season awards, plus U.S. Soccer Training Centers, ODP, id2 and other player identification programs.

From there we look at additional signs of top player performance in a club environment, with the help of an extensive network of observers around the country. The priority here is for club, college, national team and other select team coaches on the ground, but especially when we can gain corroborating opinions. The more layers of opinions we can gain accumulate the better, as our role is primarily to aggregate those viewpoints, rather than making our own determination as to a player’s quality.

As a matter of policy, we never share which coaches said what about whom so that coaches will be freer to share their assessments. Another policy is that parents’ opinions about their own children are not considered, but you are welcome to provide feedback about honors and other details that may be of help to us in keeping their profiles up to date as well as our challenge of sifting through thousands of players nationwide. That kind of data can be helpful, but the: “How can you not have rated my kid? He is awesome” communique, while compelling, will be consigned to the virtual trash.

In the end, there’s always some level of subjectivity about players, because after all, how good someone is relative to someone else is largely a matter of opinion, but we do our best to make our rankings as educated an opinion as can be.

The rankings will be updated every quarter. Keeping current rankings for 8 classes of 150 players each is no small task, and it is counterintuitive to think the rankings would change daily or weekly. We will announce each update.

So that’s it. You can see the newest version of the rankings here.