We’re excited to announce that starting a week from today — Monday, Feb. 23, 2015 — we’ll be kicking off our FAB 50 High School Rankings with our preseason list of the top teams in the country.

We’ll then have our first in-season rankings starting around mid-March and continuing for over three months as we wrap up in late June once the Midwest and East playoffs conclude.

I’m excited to announce that we will be utilizing the rankings expertise of Mark Tennis, who I’ve worked with at Student Sports for over 20 years.  Mark now runs CalHiSports.com, the top site for all things California high school related.  He is also a national rankings expert and I’ve been amazed how good he is at looking three to four steps ahead in every sport, ranging from football to softball, and making the rankings all come together smoothly.

Simply, he’s the best prep ratings guy in the nation and if we want to have the best high school softball ratings we have to go with the best! I’m excited to say that Mark will be contributing more than a dozen FAB 50 High School Rankings articles for us so stay tuned over the next few months for an exciting chase to the final No. 1 team ranking!

As I wrote about a week ago, Student Sports had a strong history with FAB 50 softball rankings going all the back to 1997 (see the compete list of year-by-year National Champions by clicking here).

This year will be especially fun as there are some key questions to be answered from the 2014 final FAB 50 rankings:

1. The 2014 FAB 50 No. 1 team, Mission Viejo (Calif.), returns pretty much the entire team including the Gatorade National Player of the Year, 2015 pitcher Taylor McQuillin. Can anybody topple the Diablos or with the one-and-done playoff format will it be tough for the So Cal powerhouse team to repeat?

2. Alexander Central from Taylorsville, N.C. finished No. 3 in our rankings but No. 1 in the USA Today final ratings and have a 66 game win streak going including a 32-0 mark from last season. Coach Monte Sherrill has led the team to state championships four of the last six years and his staff was honored as the NFCA High School Coaching Staff of the Year in December. His All-American daughter Vada returns and it will be interesting to see if the Carolina squad can continue the unbeaten streak.

3. What about states like Texas and Florida? Deer Park and The Woodlands had single digit losses, but do they have enough to hold off other contenders in Texas? Down in the Sunshine State, St. Thomas Aquinas (Ft. Lauderdale) lost their All-American battery as pitcher Meghan King (Florida State) and Gwen Svekis (Oregon) graduated. Who’ll rise to the top in these population-heavy states?

4. And what about other states with a lot of college-level talent, like Alabama, Arizona, New Jersey, Ohio, etc.? Will a team emerge as a national title contender from one of the “non-Big Three states”

As with all our rankings—both player and team—we look to you in the softball community to champion your favorite team! Be you a coach, player, parent or even a fan or alum of a particular high school, send in your reasoning and info on your FAB 50 candidate.

E-mail all info, including photos, to: Brentt@FullCountSoftball.com.

DO IT QUICKLY (NEXT FEW DAYS) FOR PRESEASON FAB 50 CONSIDERATION!