Methodology

Six principles behind every rating

1. Built on real results — we aggregate official, publicly reported match results from leagues and events across all 50 states, boys and girls U8 through U18. Reputation and rankings elsewhere don't move the needle; only what happens on the field does.
2. Strength-aware ratings — not all wins are equal. The engine weighs who you played and how tough your schedule is, so beating a strong opponent counts for more — and padding a record against weak teams doesn't inflate a rating.
3. One score, 0–100 — every team gets an Overall score from 0 to 100, so you can compare any two teams at a glance without needing to read the math.
4. National and state ranks — teams are ranked nationally within their age group and gender, and again within their state, so you can see who's best in the country and who's best near you.
5. Depth-aware club ranks — clubs are judged on more than a single standout team. Strength across age groups, depth of quality, and tournament results all factor in, so a club that's strong top to bottom rises to the top.
6. Self-learning and always current — the engine learns each team's attack and defense strength from real games and re-fits itself as new results land, so ratings, rankings, and predictions track recent form instead of a stale snapshot.

A proprietary engine

Every rating, ranking, and prediction runs on our own custom model, built from the ground up for youth soccer — not the generic Elo rating or plain national-rank sort most sites lean on. Back-tested on the same real games, it calls more winners than either alternative in the states where we've validated it.

Kept honest

The same engine powers match predictions — and we freeze every forecast before kickoff and grade it against the real result. Instead of just claiming we're accurate, we show you the real calls next to what actually happened. See real predictions vs. results.