As part of our expanded Players To Watch section, we continue to unveil our regional rankings for 2013 Boys. Today we focus on the Midwestern part of the country, with lists from the Heartland, Midwest and Great Lakes regions, plus a look to the eastern seaboard with our first look at the Mid Atlantic region.

These are four of our 16 regions, and by the end of the week we will release all 16 for 2013 Boys.

As we move forward with our summer update of National Top 150 (our 2013 Boys national list was released Monday) player rankings over the next several weeks, we’ll examine each age group more closely via these regional lists. This is just the first installment. We’ll have regional lists every Tuesday through Friday of weeks when we introduce a national list on Monday. We’ll also be expanding these regional lists each quarter to recognize more and more players as we continue scouring the countryside to find the top soccer talent.

Among the top-ranked players by region today are Chicago Fire goalkeeper Kyle Dal Santo (an SIU-Edwardsville(m) verbal commitment) for the Midwest region, Crew Soccer Academy Wolves defender Matthew Habrowski (Notre Dame) of the Great Lakes region, Scott Gallagher’s Nick Jones (Wisconsin) of the Heartland region and D.C. United’s Collin Martin in the Mid Atlantic. Martin is actually closing out his time in club soccer and our rankings this quarter as he has decided to enroll at Wake Forest early.

View the Regional Rankings.

Tomorrow we will feature regional lists for Florida, Texas, South and South Atlantic players.

Next week, we will release the national and regional lists for 2013 Girls.

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, create a profile). 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, especially college club and other coaches on the ground (recruiting interest shown is a major factor). As a matter of policy, we never share which coaches said what about whom. 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 and sifting through thousands of players nationwide

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.