Today we release our first summer update for the Players To Watch National Top 150 Ranking on TopDrawerSoccer.com This time it is the 2013 Boys class we’ve been tracking.

As part of our continuing effort to improve Players To Watch, we are now ranking four graduating classes each of boys and girls. We’ll continue unveiling these updates throughout the summer. Next week it’s 2013 Girls.

For the 2013 Boys, young professional players Diego Fagundez (New England Revolution), Zach Pfeffer (Philadelphia Union) and Jack McBean (LA Galaxy) continue to run 1-3. Another young professional, Russell Canouse from the Lancaster, Pennsylvania area, who has signed a pro contract with TSG Hoffenheim in Germany, is one of our biggest upward movers in this quarterly update.

You can see the full 2013 Boys Top 150 Rankings here.

Next week, we will release the summer update 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 player 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, 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.

The rankings will now 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 can see the updated 2013 Boys Top 150 Rankings here. As always, thank you for reading TopDrawerSoccer.com.