How teams are ranked:

1. There is no mathematical formula.
2. No really - there is no mathematical formula.
3. How well your team does against strong teams is the most important factor. That includes the top 15 to 20 teams in 6A Boys/Girls, Top 10 in 5A-1A Boys/Girls. That means strength of schedule is very important. A school which is 18-0 against a cream-puff schedule may be ranked lower than a team that is 3-15 against a top ten schedule. That 18-0 record may not include any quality wins or ties while the 3-15 may include three quality wins. This means the Alabama Power Rankings will differ from the Birmingham News/Post Herald Rankings which tend to weigh records more heavily than actual team strength.
4. If you beat a team head to head you will usually be ranked above that team but strength of schedule will still make a difference in some cases.
5. If your team wants to move up, they need to beat a team that is ranked higher than them.  One exception to this rule is that they could move up in the rankings without a significant win - IF a team ranked above them falls in the rankings due to a loss.
6. More recent games are weighted more heavily than older games.
7. Early season games when some teams have players still involved in basketball playoffs are not weighted as heavily as when the same team has their full squad available.
8. Games lost against out of state teams will not hurt a team’s ranking but wins against out of state teams can help a ranking.
9. Head to head games are considered strongly in ranking one team against another they have played.
10. When teams have played each other more than once, the latest game is weighted more heavily. That may be true even if one team has won 3 out of 4 games but lost the most recent game.
11. Lopsided wins against poor teams are not included in these evaluations. If you are playing a weak schedule you are penalized only in the sense that you will only be ranked above the teams you have beaten so if you have a perfect record but all the wins are against teams that are ranked low or unranked you may still be #20. To move up you need to beat someone that is ranked higher than you are.
12. Losses against good or great teams don't hurt much. Sometimes they don’t hurt at all.
13. Win and loss records are not important.
14. Close wins are just as good as big wins except in extreme cases. If you win 1-0 or 2-0 that's good enough for me. A lot of coaches call off the dogs once they are assured they are going to win. I know several coaches who will immediately start playing bench players when their teams get up by five goals even though they know their teams can easily 10-0 “mercy rule” the opposition.
15. Losing by a lopsided 5-0 score hurts unless it is against a Top 5 team. The exception is that I don’t penalize teams for playing and losing to the Hoovers, Briarwoods, Grissoms, Cullmans, John Carrolls, Huntsvilles, Ft. Paynes, Randolphs, Altamonts, Oak Mountains, etc. And if your team can stay within a goal or two of those teams when losing it may actually help their ranking. 
16. Winning or losing by “kicks from the mark” doesn’t help or hurt you except when compared head-to-head against an opponent. I consider those games as ties except for the head-to-head comparisons. Kicks from the mark is not soccer - it is an artificial way of choosing a winner when there is a time constraint.  Most of the world understands that a tie in soccer is not a bad thing.
17. If a 1A team beats a 5A or 6A team that may or may not help them.  It all depends on the relative strength of that team.  If they team they beat is a better team they should move up.  If they are a worse team they probably won't move up. It works in reverse also.  If a 6A team beats a strong 1A team it may help tem move up.  Classifications are about school size (number of students) not about team strength which is the important factor in the rankings.  
18. I consider coaches’ opinions in ranking the teams. I get many, many opinions a week from coaches and they are given a lot of weight and consideration.
19. Every game is not weighted the same. There are some cases when a coach, who knows his team will certainly win a game, will decide to play his younger players to give them experience. There are some late season games, before the playoffs, when a team has cemented a playoff berth where a coach will play his younger players against a tough opponent to avoid injuries to starters and to give the youngsters game experience. Or he may have a game scheduled against an opponent in a different classification late in the season which means nothing as far as the playoffs are concerned. He may decide to use that game to move players into different positions to see how they perform in case he needs to know who can play where later in the season. I try to take all of those into account. With a strict mathematical formula that wouldn’t be possible.
20. None of these are hard and fast rules. I try to see as many teams as I can and try to get as many opinions from coaches, parents and players as possible.
21. Injuries can be critical to a team’s rank. A team, which loses several key players to injuries, may drop drastically in the rankings with a loss or two despite a great early season record.
22. Making the state playoffs MAY help your chances of being ranked higher because it gives you another game against better competition. Conversely the loss that knocks a team out of the playoffs will hurt a team’s ranking significantly compared to teams still involved in playoffs. Not as much because of the loss (which might be to a great team) but because that team will no longer have a chance to beat a team that is higher ranked than they are.
23. Once the playoffs start teams that lose will drop to a point where their final ranking will be based on which teams they lost to.  So if your record indicates that your team lost to top teams you will be ranked right below them.  However, if you lose early in the playoffs and your record shows that your team has lost to lower ranked teams and only made the playoffs due to being located in a weaker area; your team will drop significantly to a point that your team will be ranked above those teams you defeated and below the teams you lost to.  This means that a team that finishes third in an area and does not make the playoffs still can finish the season highly ranked if the two teams from their area do well in the playoffs. This is in accordance with our principle that strength of schedule is more important than wins and losses.
24. The final #1 team will be the team that wins the state championship. That will be true even if I feel there is a better team out there.
25. Don’t give too much importance to these rankings or take them too seriously. The only rankings that count begin when a team makes the state playoffs.
    
    
    Let me know if you have any specific concerns about a certain team. It helps me to have people question a ranking if they think something is out of kilter.
     

      Okay - still not satisfied.  Just got to have a mathematical formula - here's the old one we used to use:

     These Alabama High School Soccer Rankings (APR) are based on the Doppler-Wilmot rating system which is also used in college football rankings.  The rankings are based on the actual rating of each team compared to other teams not just their win-loss records which may not reflect the level of their competition.  This compilation is the only high school soccer rating system to rank teams by combining the Doppler effect with the Wilmot Proviso, thus achieving proportionate reciprocal capability. The Doppler effect is a law in physics discovered by Christian Doppler, who lived from 1803 to 1853. The Wilmot Proviso was proposed by David Wilmot, who lived from 1814 to 1868. Their meeting in 1851 was the foundation of this system. Used within the context of this rating system, the term state champion of high school soccer in any given season signifies the school with the greatest analytic ratio of logarithmic differential superiority. To learn more about the Doppler-Wilmot system click here.