Going where angels fear to tread, we are releasing our initial Freshmen Top 100 list for Women’s College Soccer as part of our Players To Watch section.

The interest in our overall list has been tremendous and we are already hearing of eager anticipation for the men’s lists due out next Wednesday (with the men’s freshmen list due out the Wednesday after that). All of the lists are updated each week.

The lists are simply our best effort to track the top players in each DI conference. As a result it is based on performance, but for the sake of accuracy we don’t want to jump to hasty conclusions regarding a player’s current standing. If a player is out for the season due to injury or other reasons, they will leave the list entirely, but if they are out for a week or two we don’t expect to drop them in the rankings automatically. If their performance then lags however, this will be reflected in the rankings.

That word “performance” can be tricky, we understand. This list is more than a regurgitation of the goalscorer list. We recognize soccer as the ultimate team game with important roles for all players, including but not exclusive to goal-scoring. This is why we pour over match reports and have other conversations each week to get our best idea of who is doing the business in each conference and category.

We welcome your constructive feedback. We read everything sent to us but time does not allow us to respond to everything. If there is a development regarding a player’s role or playing time, feel free to inform us. While we go over everything it is still hard to know everything, so feel free to chip in with helpful information. Remember in the end this is supposed to be an enjoyable thing, this following of top-quality soccer playing, so don’t let these rankings, no matter how strongly you disagree with them, become a personal spoiler. Life really is too short (but we promise we’re doing our very best to make them as accurate as possible).

Click here for the Women's Top 100 Freshman Ranking.