The IMG Academy Top 150 rankings update for boys in the 2019 graduating class is out today.  Outside defender John Hilton still heads up the list, but there have been some changes to the top five. Climbing up the ranks are IMG Academy’s Indiana Vassilev and Real Salt Lake AZ’s Luis Arriaga, both of whom excelled for the U.S. U14 Boys’ National Team in the August camp. Vassilev moved to IMG this season from Storm Soccer Academy in Georgia, while Arriaga left his home in Northern California and his club Santa Rosa United to live and train with RSL.

More: U14 BNT Scrimmage Standouts | U15 BNT Mega Camp Roster

In addition to the players above, there were notable moves/additions throughout the IMG Academy 150 over the last few months. DC United’s Michael Edwards, New York Red Bulls’ Jonathan Ned, Vardar’s Gianni Ferri, St. Louis Scott Gallagher’s Kipp Keller, and World Class FC’s Jarec Morlote are highlighted below.

Edwards plays both in defense and midfield for DC United’s U16 Development Academy and spent the past week in Florida with the U15 BNT, one of only five 2019s in attendance.

Ned transferred over the summer from Capital Area Railhawks-CASL to the Red Bulls Academy, and has earned six starts in defense for the Red Bulls U14s.

Ferri is having a fantastic season in midfield for Vardar, with 13 goals in 12 matches for the U14 Development Academy squad ranked No. 19 in the Grande Sports Academy TeamRank Top 25.

Keller has been training in Brazil with Clube Atletico Paranaense for the past several months, and upon his return to St. Louis, will join the SLSG U16 DA squad in midfield.

Jorlote is a versatile center back for the World Class U14 Development Academy, proficient at playing out of the back, and has started every match during the 2015-16 season.

In addition to the IMG Academy 150 update, we will update the regional rankings as well throughout the next couple of weeks. Some of the players to be added include Charlotte SA center back Ryan Alexander, Chargers SC center mid Anthony Hroncich, Houstonians forward Kevin Gonzalez, Shattuck St. Mary’s goalkeeper Christian Burkhardt, and many, many more.

Keep checking back throughout the week to see who else made the lists.

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 three times per year. 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.