Interesting.
We now have single age groups for u12, 13, 14, and u15.
But it seems 2002 players are pretty much the only ones left out in the cold. They are in a combined age-group with 2001s. Judging by the past, most combined age group teams have 80-90% of the older birth year. DA now only has two combined age groups, u16/17 and u18/19. By u18/u19 the physical differences are negligible, but with u16/17 (which is basically 14 and 16 year-olds grouped together) there are still some noticeable physical disparities. There's going to be a lot of 2002s out of the DA system next year.
In the past, there were fewer DA clubs and teams, so if a player left DA during an off-year they could still find some good competition in CRL, Nationals, SCDSL, and etc. But with so many clubs and age groups in DA now, the off-year competition is going to be even more thin. I actually think combined age-groups are a good thing when done properly because it forces players to play-up. The problem is clubs take so few of the younger birth year or give them such little play time, it basically just becomes like any other single birth year team with a couple of outliers. And in this case, the 2002s have aged out of the single age groups and the younger 2002s will probably struggle to get on teams of 16 year-olds.