The 2015 Girls IMG Academy Top 150 Rankings winter update is out today. Slammers’ Natalie Jacobs just completed a superior performance at center back for the United States U17 Women’s National Team, positioning herself well for continued success with youth national team play at the older age groups. Jacobs’ efforts have earned her a spot in the top 10 at No. 8.

A couple of forwards have been impossible to miss of late, both landing in the top 50. Leah Pruitt, at No. 34, has been touted as the best player on West Coast FC’s ECNL squad which leads the Southwest Conference and holds the No. 2 spot in the Grande Sports Academy TeamRank Top 25. Pruitt has 14 goals in 11 games in ECNL play, and earned a spot on the U17 WNT roster for the last two camps. Vardar’s Kelly Sweeney has been lighting up the scoreboard in ECNL play this season, and could easily finish with more than 30 goals when the Texas showcase concludes next weekend. The Michigan recruit climbs from her debut at No. 138 all the way to No. 36 with this update.

Another Michigan recruit, Canadian outside back Sura Yekka, recently made her debut with the full Canadian National Team in a scrimmage against the USA, her play on the flank making life difficult for the US defense. Yekka lands at the No. 59 spot in our rankings. In addition to Yekka, several others have received multiple recommendations and have earned their spots in the IMG Academy 150. These players include LA Premier midfielder Chloe Castaneda, Colorado Rush left back Madeline Flom, TSC Hurricane midfielder Kaylee Dao, Beach FC forward Michelle Reed, and PDA goalkeeper Penelope Edmonds. Click here to see where they are ranked.

Not only has the IMG Academy 150 received scrutiny, but the regional lists have been updated as well. Keep checking back this week as we unveil newcomers such as Internationals goalkeeper Taylor Smith, Sockers utility player Sarah O’Connor, PDA defender Emily Rimdzius, FC Stars defender/midfielder Alexandra Elworthy, CASL defender Tory Andrews, and many, many more.

You can see the newest version of the rankings here.

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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