chargerfan
GOLD
More than just theory, that is the goal.
Before starting a girls academy, US Soccer struggled with the competing goals of creating the most competitive league, while at the same time having enough teams in each region to avoid excessive travel for league games. Dual age bands for olders helps accomplish both goals (club participation does start to fall after U13), while at the same time starting to narrow the field and control their event costs at the older age groups.
Now it may be they will go to a single age bracket for girls. I think that would be a positive for the college recruiting goals of the players (and perhaps for college coaches as well looking to have one primary league to scout). But on the boys side, they have not done so, primarily becasue it adds nothing to their ultimate goal of identifying and developing US National Team players.
Hopefully nobody went into this thinking US Soccer’s goal was to place these players into college. The goal was only to identify the top .5%, and they don’t care if the rest play local leagues. Will the clubs with both DA and ECNL make their current 03 ECNL teams the C team? Also, will 03s at non-ECNL clubs be happy to play in an unsuccessful DPL league?