What Goes Into a National Ranking?
National Rankings. Where do we begin?
Prep Dig has grown immensely in the past four years where in January of 2018, I started Prep Dig Wisconsin, becoming the third Prep Dig state along with Prep Dig Nebraska and Prep Dig Minnesota. We provide hyper local coverage which also includes rankings per class in each state. The thought of player rankings is a daunting task, whether it be at the state level or now, the national level. Through providing player rankings in Wisconsin, Illinois, Iowa, and Minnesota, I have developed a small method to the madness as to where to start when it comes to ranking players. Is this subjective? Yes. Do we miss players? Yes. Are we working to improve our system? Yes. This is monumental for Prep Dig as we release our first national rankings, but before we head into these rankings, here is a peak behind the curtain as to how these rankings came to be.
The Live Eye
Above all, we value what the live eye tells us. Over the past four years, I have covered teams across the country from small, sweaty summer league gyms to national qualifiers where athletes are playing against some of the best in the world. From there, articles are written about these athletes, I keep track of athletes in a spreadsheet, and I ask a lot of questions to my volleyball network as to how they evaluate, what are the top coaches looking for, why would this player be chosen over this player for a scholarship? I always want to remain a student of the game, but also one who can network and talk about athletes with other coaches and volleyball minds to keep the conversations going.
Our Network
With over 20 individual states for Prep Dig, I’m able to use our database of players who are ranked within their own state. We are still continuing to improve our rankings and data collection process to keep things as accurate as possible. We have thousands of players ranked on our website where articles are able to be tagged to their name. What our rankings do is provide a major database to college coaches to see where athletes are playing club, if they are committed, and read up on articles they have been mentioned in.
Splitting Hairs Among The Best. How?
At the state level, it gets really tough separating the top players and after doing the national rankings – it was a different beast. As previously mentioned, we really value the live eye, but I also had plenty of notes where we knew if these athletes were involved with the USA Youth National Teams, USA Youth Training, Under Armour All American Game, Gatorade Player of the Year, and other anecdotal notes about players. Do we factor in where they are committed? To an extent, but if that were a bigger factor then we would never have changes in recruiting rankings or player rankings.
What’s Next?
For the Class of 2022, a lot of these athletes are committed, some are already on campus, and they are just adding icing to an already decorated career in their final club season. Our tentative play for Prep Dig National is to release one class per month. Class of 2023 – March, Class of 2024 – April, and Class of 2025 – May. We need to get out and see these athletes play. The live eye. We will continue to use our network, reach out for feedback to coaches across the country, and continue to work through the rankings process (as well as continuing to improve our process). In my experience with ranking players, I have not hear of any athletes who have been offered or denied a scholarship based on a Prep Dig ranking. This is simply a resource and not an end all be all in regards to recruiting.
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