The Girls 2015 IMG Academy Top 150 Rankings summer update is out today. Eclipse Select’s Kayla McCoy remains #1 having recovered from a torn ACL suffered last fall, and is back in action with the U.S. U18 Women’s National Team this week in Carson, CA. Climbing one spot to #3 is PDA midfielder/forward Taylor Racioppi. Racioppi, who along with McCoy has committed to Duke University, has attended every U17 WNT camp held in 2013 in preparation for World Cup qualifying.

Taylor Racioppi

Making significant jumps up the ranks with this update are some players who have caught the eye of national team staff, including Washington Premier forward Kelcie Hedge, Colorado Rush goalkeeper Sabrina Macias, and FC Stars of Massachusetts midfielder Gabriella Carreiro. All three are in the mix to make the final squad for U17 Concacaf qualifying which begins in October. Click here to see where they are ranked.

Crossfire Premier midfielder Kennedy Kieneker, Gretna FC midfielder Michelle Xiao, Concorde Fire goalkeeper Rose Chandler and Sereno defender Emily Poblete are all new to the IMG Academy 150 this time around. Kieneker, an Arizona commit at #104, commands the midfield for Justi Baumgardt’s squad that finished third in the ECNL Northwest Conference. Xiao, a Stanford commit at #112, was a member of the U14 GNT back in 2011, and was recently invited to the U17 WNT camp in Ohio. Chandler, at #130, is committed to Penn State and is in Carson this week with the U18 WNT, while Poblete, at #135 was part of the backline for ECNL national champion Sereno SC, and was tabbed one of the standouts of the ECNL National Finals.

Not only has the IMG Top 150 received scrutiny, but the regional lists have been updated as well. Keep checking back this week as we unveil newcomers such as Fort Wayne Fever’s Kellee O’Shaughnessy, Kings Hammer Academy’s Bailey Feist, Bethesda SC’s Madeline Pack, FC Stars of Massachusetts’ Pietra Sweeney, Charlotte SA’s Lauren Lucas, and many, many more.

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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