FWIW, according to
www.statista.com there are
11.41 Million outdoor soccer participants in the United States. There are
5.23 Million indoor participants in the United States. Of course that is counting professional players - male & female, college (all the various levels & associations) players - male & female, high school male and femaile and so on down to kids in grade school or younger.
As of 2019, there were
459,077 boys participants in high school in the United States. As of 2019, there were
394,105 girls participants in high school in the United States. These numbers have grown some since then. I have heard there are now over
450.000 high school aged female soccer players in the U.S. Most U.S. high schools are on the grades 9-12 model. Rounding down the above number to just
400,000 girl soccer players in high school and then dividing by 4, you get
100,000 girls soccer players graduating every graduating class.
I bring this up because some uninformed people think that if a soccer recruit is not in the Top 100 players in their graduating class, that they aren't any good. I spoke with an acquaintance the other day, and that is basically what he thinks. That if a recruit (male or female) is not in the Top 100 or so players, that they can't play.
First off, rankings of teams or players is all
highly subjective. It's just people's opinions. And virtually all people have their biases and prejudices whether they realize it or not and whether they would admit it or not. So, a player that I posted about in a previous post is rated the
#151 player in the country. To some, that is not very high. She is a
player according to TDS. That is their subjective opinion on where she ranks for her graduating class. Various recruiting services would most likely have her ranked either higher or lower than that.
Also, it is
splitting hairs when it comes to what player gets ranked where. You could have 20-30 maybe even more players that are virtually dead even in their athletic skills for their sport. So, it becomes a lot of guess work and just plugging in a player in at a given number. Using the player ranked at
#151 above and based on a rounded off number of
100,000 girls high school senior soccer players, that player comes out to being in the top
0.00151% of those 100K graduating female soccer players for her graduating class! So, while some think that #151 is not all that great...said player is an
elite soccer player. She is a
recruit. She has played club soccer & high school soccer. She has a blue collar work ethic and has a 4.0 GPA. And she will be getting coached by one of the top college soccer coaching staffs in the country, with some of the finest facilities in the country. She's going to help PSU WSOC win a lot of games during her time at Penn State and get a great education while doing so. But according to this acquaintance, in his words: "She must not be very good." Good grief.
Was just on the Top Drawer Soccer site and they explain their use of star ratings and then how they try to rank players within each star level. They say basically what I posted above, namely that "we are more confident in a player's star rating, than we are in where players are ranked within that star rating. " So, they are more confident in a player being a 4 star talent, but when it comes to saying that one 4 star player is #50 in the country, while another 4 star player is #75...that it gets very subjective and you are basically splitting hairs as to where to rank players.
Sam Coffey, was rated a 4 star recruit back in the 2017 class by TDS; but many would tell you that she has out performed players that back in 2017 where rated as 5 star players.
