With each seasonal update, class-by-class, our regional rankings lists continue getting longer and longer.

Today we release the full regional lists, following the Fall update, for the 2014 Girls graduating classes. The National Top 150 for this age group was released Monday, and you can check it out it here.

A survey of the regional lists shows a heavy dose of youth national team players at the top of each list, but also a deepening list of players as we enjoy more and more feedback from coaches at all levels to the question of who the top players are.

Mikaela Harvey

Among those receiving the  nod for the top spot in a given region are Slammers FC defender Indigo Gibson in Southern California, Lonestar SC attacker and Texas A&M recruit Mikaela Harvey in Texas, Michigan Hawks attacker and North Carolina commitment Megan Buckingham in Great Lakes, and PDA midfielder Caroline Chagares in New Jersey.

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 read the newest version of the rankings on our 2014 Girls Regional Rankings page.

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