As part of our expanded Players To Watch section, today we unveil the first four of our regional rankings for 2014 Boys. Today we focus on the western part of the country, with lists from the Heartland, Midwest, Great Lakes and Mid Atlantic regions.

These are four of our 16 regions, and by the end of the week we will release all 16 for this age group and gender.

As we move forward with our summer update of National Top 150 (our 2014 Boys national list was released Monday) player rankings over the next several weeks, we’ll examine each age group more closely via these regional lists. This is just one installment. We’ll have regional lists every Tuesday through Friday of weeks when we introduce a national list on Monday. We’ll also be expanding these regional lists to recognize more and more players as we continue scouring the countryside to find the top soccer talent.

Among the top-ranked players by region today are Sporting Kansas City midfielder Joey Piaatcyzyc (Heartland), Richard Olson of Sockers (Midwest), Ahinga Selemani of Michigan Wolves and the U17 Men’s National Team (Great Lakes) and Junior Flores of McLean Youth Soccer and the U17 MNT (Mid Atlantic).

Check out the Regional Ranking pages.

Tomorrow we will feature regional lists for Texas, South, Florida and South Atlantic players.

Next week, we will release the national and regional lists for 2014 Girls.

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). 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, especially college club and other coaches on the ground (recruiting interest shown is a major factor). As a matter of policy, we never share which coaches said what about whom. 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 and sifting through thousands of players nationwide

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.

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