Inside Pitch: The 2025 Extra Elite 100 Rankings… The Good, The Bad & The Ugly

So, how was your night?

Me, personally, I’ve had better… I’d put Friday evening up there with the few blessed times I got the privilege of passing kidney stones (this, if not fully evident, is me being sarcastic).

This is Brentt Eads of Extra Inning Softball (“EIS”) and, seriously, I want to cover what went right… and what went wrong… with the updated 2025 Extra Elite 100 rankings that concluded Friday evening and have a lot of people talking (that’s putting it nicely)… more like gathering their torches and pitchforks.

Last night’s post revealing the 1-10 players of the incoming junior class culminated the two weeks of publishing rankings with bios, photos, coaches’ insights, and quotes—everything available to us to recognize the players written up in the 1-100 range.

Upcoming for the 2025’s: many others who will be honored—including via All-Region and All-Position Teams—after the months of preparation that went into it.

Let’s call it as it is: While there are some happy people satisfied with this round of rankings, there are some very upset people—including players—who were more than a little disappointed at how the rankings came out.

For example, I got this note shared to me last night from a coach regarding a talented player being recruited who didn’t make the 1-100 list:

“(The player) is bawling her eyes out and her mom is bawling her eyes out.  The dad is freaking out. It is a very difficult time. Her mom said that (the player) has busted her butt to get in these rankings and that they mean everything to her.”

Point being here that we are aware and sensitive to how the EIS rankings are appreciated and valued; if there’s one good thing learned out of this that I’ve witnessed over the last 24 hours, it’s that the rankings do carry some weight, are passionately discussed and mean a lot to many people.

But that can be good or bad, which I’ll cover here in a minute.

The Big Picture

Let’s go from big picture to small: how many fastpitch softball players are there that are considered?

One study said there are over 700,000 girls who play fastpitch at all ages while a National Scouting Report post mentioned “that 40,000 girls at any given time get to play college softball… However, the most important number to remember is 2%. Only 2 to 3% of high school softball athletes get to play college softball.”

OK, so comparatively very few percentage-wise who play the game, be it rec ball or travel… we all understand that.

Now, let’s look at numbers involved with the Extra Elite 100 process.

For the 2025 class, we had close to 1,300 nominations entered online where primarily club coaches (had a small percentage of the athletes’ high school coaches, too) recommended their players—and these are the elite kids that these dedicated club coaches are with continually from practices and workouts to games and tournaments, many on the road and outside a player’s local area—so they know them well.

This round was the second highest level of nominations we’ve had—the previous class ranked, the 2026’s—had more than 1,500 nominations.

Point being that these softball athletes—those serious enough to want to be the 2-3% who play in college—will do whatever it takes to improve and live their dreams of playing at the next level.

Again, we’re all in agreement and admiration for the passion and dedication of those involved: the players, their parents and families as well as their coaches, trainers and instructors.

Here’s where it becomes a numbers game.

As mentioned above, for the 2025 class just published, we had about 1,300 nominations. Of those, 138 of the completed nominations online (through the EIS online system) were recommended to be in the Top 10.

And a total of 210 were nominated total to be in the Top 20.

Very few then, less than 10%, would be where the coaches projected they think they should be… a hard truth, but something we/I am used to dealing with.

You don’t have to be Einstein to do the math and realize that some good players are going to be ranked lower than hoped for or, in some cases, not ranked at all.

The Process

Typically, each class (2024, 2025, 2026, etc.) provides about a month for nominations to be submitted, then there’s a couple weeks of prep work before the publishing of the lists with bios and photos is begun.

Getting the nominations is the first step, what we then do is to reach out to top club coaches nationally who are familiar not just with their players but with the other standouts across the country they play against.

For the 2025 class, we reached out to more than 75 top travel ball coaches to get their input on who they liked, who didn’t impress them, etc.

Believe me, we get a lot of feedback and that’s just from the club level—this is sensitive info, but we do have some college coaching friends who share their thoughts with us off the record because they aren’t allowed to discuss publicly, and we appreciate their trust in sharing insights with us.

We try to build a consensus best we can of who the elite of the elite are by doing hundreds of hours of research, looking at who we’ve honored previously and who has emerged since the last rounds of rankings.

All good so far? I hope so… now, let’s getting into the sticky stuff.

Off Track

Today, almost all of this player nomination information is submitted online (previously, the primary source of submissions was through emails) and are imported into a database system with columns such as:

• First Name
• Last Name
• Team
• City/State
• Why the player should be ranked
• Individual Info
• Team Accomplishments
• … and so on.

Those above are filled in by the coaches.

And then there are columns key to where the players will ultimately end up in coding we use internally:

• Recommend Range (where the nominating coach thinks the player should be slotted or considered)
• Last Year’s Ranking
• Working Range
• Final # (where the athletes end up on the list)

I give you this insight into the backend admin because this is where we had issues with this class. Or I had issues with this class.

Not to go into too much gory detail, but the database containing the 1,300 or so nominations was sorted but some of the suggested ranking numbers tied into a player got messed up… in other words, somehow part of the info in the spreadsheet got realigned or shifted and didn’t stay with the player’s record as intended.

One example: there was a player who was suggested to be in the “10-20” range but when the database was sorted, the corresponding column of “Recommended Range” next to her “Name” was shifted incorrectly and she was “recommended” or listed at 101-200.

Important note here: this happened to a relatively low percentage of player names, but it did impact some who, frankly, are top 100 caliber. For a few of them, we actually had pre-written bios and cropped photos to get ready for the posting, they were IN as intended… at one point.

I caught a few of them, but a number slipped by.

Things looked nice and clean—we had a true 1-100 as planned—but here’s where what has worked over 40 times before in doing previous class rankings failed.

With the mis-sorting, if you will, there were some players that were nominated that didn’t have the proper “Recommended Range” and, worse, didn’t have a “Final” number assigned.

Being honest and vulnerable here, there were a handful of players—even including some that were previously in the Top 10 or Top 20—that were inaccurately assigned a wrong “Final” number based on the error with sorting the data and were left out.

To give an example, there was a highly-ranked top 10 caliber player in the last 2025 class update (in 2022) that fell out of the top 100 completely, undeservedly and unintentionally.

I feel awful that some worthy candidates, whose coaches did everything right, got lost in the process and are hurting emotionally for it. I have several anecdotes of club coaches getting chewed out by players and parents who didn’t think they were supported enough.

That couldn’t be further from the truth… give the coaches some credit here, people!!!

SUMMATION: some deserving players who should have made the Top 100 didn’t—there were mistakes made and that is on m (Brentt Eads)..

How to Proceed

In previously years, we did “ties” where there might be as many as four or five players ranked at the same number, say #18 in the ranking.

This was to honor kids, as many as possible, but we got pushback from it saying it was “bloating” or “watering down the rankings.”

To be more “pure,” if you will, we made the decision to go straight 1-100 and are sticking to it. And we did that this class and the principle worked, but the process went off track.

Previously, this meant that—say a player was ranked #32 previously—but, if there were four ties for #’s 2 through #32, in essence in a true straight listing the player was actually in the #120 to 130 range, in you want to look at it that way.

What are our options moving forward to rectify this mistake?

If we did the “ties” system from the past, it just brings up the same problems and, as one top club coach put it, “If you add players outside the Top 100 that was already posted, you will lose credibility.”

You allow one tie in, then everyone will demand they should be in, the dam overflows and we have the same issues as before.

And I’m not worried about that as much as we’re wanting to do right by the deserving players, but ties add more complications than it does solve the problem.

One fleeting thought was to take down the rankings and “redo,” but what does that do? Yes, it gets deserving kids in, but it will push others out—ones already honored. No good, that would be worse.

Some say leave it as is with the caveat that mistakes were made and move on. But that doesn’t help those hurt by my mistake.

Let me please emphasize that we have a LOT of other ways to recognize deserving softball players including:

• All-Region rankings
• All-Position rankings
• All-American Teams
• All-Summer Team
• Player Features
• … and more

And we will be keeping it to a true 1-100 in the future but I promise we are–and will continue—to make improvements; in the next week or so, you’ll read about us hiring two new people, one dedicated to helping with rankings and making them better by getting more feedback and input at all levels.

One thing I’ve thought about for those who have been ranked previously, like last year, is you can always use the system that we see teams use they say something like:

The New Hampshire Nuggets:

• Finished 3^rd at Top Gun Invitational (2022)
• Top 10 finish at Boulder IDT (2021).

In other words, for whatever purpose—be it for social media, for college coach awareness or just for self-esteem, you can put:

Sally Bio Info

• “#25 in 2025 Extra Elite 100 (2022)”

… which is true and accurate of the rating as it was last year.

Obviously, if you’re happy with this year’s, it’s published and you can refer to it as is.

Final Thoughts

Everyone: I am truly sorry for the hurt these glitches have caused and I take ownership because the buck stops with me on this.

I’ll go back to the beginning when I mentioned these rankings are meant to honor kids and be a positive reflection on their talents, drive and dedication to the sport.

We are a media company and compare these rankings to editorial content which also recognizes players for their efforts and successes such as in the Gatorade Player of the Year or a news site’s All-State, All-District or All-League teams.

EIS is not a recruiting company or a scouting service… we are a media company covering a diverse range of ages – youth up through pro and international—and stories, usually 4-5 per day.

I will say personally that from my experiences over the last 20 years, rankings aren’t going to seriously impact an athlete’s recruiting status—college coaches have told me they like the rankings for one main reason: it’s doing something positive for the sport (or is supposed to be) but they have to do the scouting and due diligence on their own.

Being in the Extra Elite 100 is going to get noticed and is a badge of honor, but it’s intended to be recognition for those being recruited or having the potential to be so, NOT that where a ranking of #23 gets you better offers than being #53.

I’ve NEVER seen that and would never expect to; that would be lazy recruiting if so! Coaches do what coaches do, and that’s evaluate, scout and find the right fit.

Wrapping this wordy piece up, I hope you’ll believe me when say our hearts are in the right place and we’re truly trying to better the sport, not cause pain to those deserving to have their stories told.

We are and will get better, I promise.

Or, as I’ve long threatened, I WILL move to Antarctic to become a caretaker for lost sea lions, walruses and other forsaken creatures. And will definitely not have Wi-Fi when I’m there so curse me out now because soon I’ll be off the grid.

Last words: We are willing to hear your thoughts, advice and insights… if you want to email us, you can do so at: [email protected]

Please limit F-bombs to 3 or less per email and know that, if you insult my ancestry, I’m adopted so it won’t really hurt me too much.

Love you all and will be in touch once I’m securely hidden in the Witness Protection Program…

— Brentt Eads
President & Executive Editor
Extra Inning Softball