We have finally updated our Girls HS Rankings and the changes therein tell us something ... something good.

We have had so many teams put their hand up that we expanded the rankings to a Top 50.

We got several early-season guesses wrong ... thinking "well it could be this team or it could be that team" and we'd pick one and it'd be the other one that was stronger. Add to that the Midwest and National tournaments, and the Montana Invitational, and we were prompted to make a number of drastic changes.

Part of this is fueled by some leagues that have expanded. There are more teams playing in a number of states, and new ones are coming to the fore. That is enormously good news, but it also blew up our rankings.

Idaho has emerged as a dominant state nationally, and that's in part because they concentrated on developing single-school teams that were close to each other. It's not especially difficult to get to the schools to ply, and that makes it easier to coach, to organize, to play, and to recruit.

Here's a graphic of a trip you could take to visit all six teams in the Idaho league, starting at Middleston HS and ending at Emmett HS. That trip, according to Google, takes about 80 minutes ... to visit all of them. 

Probably the longest trips overall are from Middleton, and they are all 25 to 30 minutes. We know there are leagues where every trip is hours long.

Some Explanations

It is objectively clear that Belmont Shore is the best HS team in the country. We haven't seen, and dispassionate observers agree, anyone that compares to them aside from Majestics. Eagle HS won the single-school national tournament, but they did lose to Rocky Mountain in the Idaho final. We toyed with the idea of listing both at #3 and it's not a terrible idea. However, Rocky Mountain didn't pass on the national tournament because they didn't want to play; it's just that because of their player makeup they can't play on Sundays. That's not ducking competition, that's just circumstances.

Eagle HS does have a slightly stronger strength of schedule because of the national tournament, but it's not enough. Finally, is this a vastly improved Eagle team? Maybe ... but they beat Meridian 29-7 in early April and Meridian 34-7 five weeks later. So improved, but Rocky Mountain's win over Eagle is just a week before that NIT final win.

Middleton out of Idaho was ranked at 29 and it's a bit rough to drop them, but that initial ranking was really just based on one result. Here we make a different decision from the one we made re Eagle. Because Meridian beat DSHA, and we have a lot of evidence that DSHA is very strong still, strength of schedule and the impressive nature of their wins over Hamilton and DSHA puts Meridian in the Top 10, and Middleton, a team that beat them, in the 40s.

Kahuku moves up basically because we saw that they had played and won their state and played other games, including the Montana Invitational. There they won in very convincing fashion. 

We have included a number of teams, including WSR from Iowa, that play mostly 7s. That's tough to do, but in the end we feel they need to be recognized.

Some fun stats: Fourteen teams move from unranked to ranked, with Meridian and Kahuku jumping into the top 10. Seven previously-ranked teams moved more than 10 spots, with most of them moving down (thanks to the 14 joining the rankings).

We got a lot wrong a month ago, so who knows? Maybe we've got a lot wrong again.

And One Final, Personal Note

Generally I as the writer don't talk about the specific criticisms I get. It's all good ... this job opens me up to criticism. But one criticism I do get when I talk about girls rugby, especially lauding one team and not another, is that I don't understand the sacrifice and hard work and bravery of the girls on a specific team. I can assure you I do. I coached a fairly successful girls team for seven years. I know what it takes to be good in girls rugby, what are the causes for lack of success, and what high school girls go through to get on the field and perform.

I also know there's a standard, and there are really good teams all over the country. So, yes, tell me I don't know what I'm talking about ... that's what I'm here for. But tell me I don't know what it takes? No, you're wrong, I do.