Today we unveil our initial ranking of the top 100 freshmen in women’s college soccer.

The effort involves looking at the performances of players on more than 300 Division One women’s soccer teams and assessing conference level of competition, playing time and other statistical data that might affect such an evaluation, depending on the position played.

One conclusion we can draw after doing this for several years is that it is well nigh impossible to boil such a list down to 100 players. Freshmen are playing more and more of a role with their teams in college soccer these days, especially on the women’s side.

Choosing a number one is pretty tough too. We finally decided on North Carolina’s Summer Green, already off to a strong goal-scoring start with the Tar  Heels despite having to leave for a while to play in the FIFA U17 World Cup. She gets the slightest of nods over Virginia’s Makenzy Doniak. A member of the U20 WNT, meanwhile, is in at #3, in Notre Dame’s Cari Roccaro. Penn State’s Mallory Weber is ranked #4 and Stanford’s Laura Liedle at #5.

The full list is available here.

The list includes redshirt freshmen.

Check out our top 100 ranking of upperclassmen, which just underwent a midseason update.

Our inaugural ranking of freshmen on the men’s side will come later this week.

We will update each of these lists at the end of the season.