The IMG Academy Top 150 Rankings summer update for boys in the 2014 graduating class is out. Caleb Calvert leaps into the top 10 on the news of his homegrown signing with MLS club Chivas USA. The forward from Wrightwood, California is currently attending his first U.S. Youth National Team camp at the StubHub Center.

Caleb Calvert

More than a few players make their debut with this update. We have received extensive feedback from coaches (college and club) and our own scouts at events over the spring season. Some of the players that stood out are Houston Dynamo forward Elochukwu Ozumba, PDA midfielder Brian White, and Georgia United defender/forward Malcolm Stewart.

Ozumba scored twice in Dynamo’s defeat of the New York Red Bulls at the Academy playoffs, including the eventual game-winner, earning his team a spot at Finals Week. White, a Duke commit who performed well at the Academy playoffs, received multiple recommendations to be added to our list. Stewart, a Charlotte commit, is a member of the Jamaican U17 national team and was noticed by our scouts at events this season. Click here to see where they are ranked.

In addition to the IMG Academy Top 150 update, we have made key changes to the regional rankings which will be unveiled throughout the week. Some of the additions include Indiana Fire Academy midfielder Mike Riedford, St. Louis Scott Gallagher Metro midfielder Desmond Dolphy, Shattuck St. Mary’s center back Justin Dragan, and Revolution Empire defender and Syracuse commit Spencer Kopko. Keep checking back 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 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.

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