Inside Pitch: What It Takes to Be Rated #1 in the Extra Elite 100 Rankings!

Note: Later today, the #1 player in the updated 2025 Extra Elite 100 will be announced and, as our readership continues to grow, we find it beneficial to detail the thinking and process that goes into choosing the top-ranked player in each class.

Brentt Eads, President & Executive Editor of Extra Inning Softball, has been compiling and ranking the top 100 high school/club players in each grad class since 2013 when he first did the top 100 for the Class of 2014.

Since he began publishing his lists, he’s done 13 grad years now from 2014 to 2026 rankings and has updated most of them as many as three or four times for a total of 36 player rankings lists after this one is finished!

And whereas the rankings lists were originally just 100 prospects deep, he’s now going several hundred players deep in each ratings update.

“Today we unveil who will be the #1 player in our updated Class of 2025 rankings,” Brentt said this morning. “We’ve had some great ones in the past who’ve gone on to successful college careers, including Jenna Lilley, Amanda Lorenz, Miranda Elish and current standouts such as Megan Faraimo, Kelley Lynch and freshman Jayda Coleman among others. I honestly feel the player we name later today has a chance to be in discussions someday with these outstanding talents!”

Here’s more on what Brentt thinks are the common factors that help a player be the top-rated prospect in her class…

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It’s become a tradition to update this article with each Extra Elite 100 class that we do and later today we’ll announce the top-ranked player in the second round of the Class of 2025.

Let’s talk about the criteria not just for being ranked highly, but also what it takes to be listed as the #1 player in any class. As we look at the players who’ve been No. 1 in the past, you see a lot of similarities.

More on that in a minute…

First, let’s look at the list of players who’ve been on the top of their class when they came out as I ranked them at the time (between 2013 and today), first while at Student Sports before publishing Full Count Softball, then FloSoftball and now Extra Inning Softball.

(Note that when there were different players for updated lists, the first ones listed are the more recently ranked.)

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