My son's classmates is an 08 for our local large club, and yes they handed out the DA patch even though they are just a 'pre-DA' team, whatever that means. Yes, she goes around saying she's "DA". No, I don't think she really knows the difference. Marketing.
My 2 cents...so much stupid drama goes on in club soccer it's not worth losing sleep over and you just need to accept youth soccer is really broken (or get out). On the other hand, for those of us working to improve the system, I get that this stuff is grating....after all, why bother having age group brackets if you aren't going to enforce the level brackets. I personally think that there should be restrictions on the amount of guest players and on players playing up or down more than 1 level for a tournament to be officially sanctioned by CalSouth....if that results in fewer tournaments, so be it.