The 2014 Girls IMG Academy Top 150 Rankings spring update is out today. The top five remain unchanged with this update, but there are many changes to talk about as well as a slew of new players who are catching the eye of U.S. Soccer staff and college coaches.

Internationals midfielder Emily Ogle continues her run of success in the ECNL this season as well as with the US U18 Women’s National Team, and moves from #54 to #41 with this update. Ogle, an Alabama commit, has added to her stats sheet with 8 goals and 10 assists so far in the ECNL, and will add to her resume later this month when she attends her second U18 WNT camp. Also on the rise is Lonestar midfielder and LSU commit Christyna Pitre, climbing from #135 to #116, who has led her team, alongside #4 Mikaela Harvey, to an undefeated record and first place in the competitive Texas Conference.

Highlighting the IMG Academy 150 debutantes this quarter are San Diego Surf goalkeeper Arielle Schechtman, at #100, and Crossfire Premier midfielder Darby Mason at #145. Schechtman’s season began with an outstanding performance at Surf Cup, including shutout performances against top clubs Fram and Tophat, as well as So Cal Blues in the final. The UCLA commit has only allowed 7 goals in all ECNL play this season, and has received an invitation to the April U18 WNT camp. Mason, who is committed to Penn, is in her first season with Crossfire, having played for non-ECNL club Eastside FC in 2011-12, and has led her team to a first place standing in the Northwest Conference.

Not only has the IMG Top 150 received scrutiny, but the regional lists have been updated as well. Keep checking back this week as we unveil newcomers such as St. Louis Scott Gallagher Metro’s Quinn Wilkes, Crossfire Premier’s Emily Crichlow, Lonestar’s Chelsea Jackson 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.