The Altona Gator Junior Boys and Girls Teams compete in the Victoria Junior Basketball League (VJBL) is considered the premier competition for junior basketball in Australia and comprises of teams mostly from Metropolitan Melbourne as well as some teams from Regional Victoria.

The competition provides wonderful development opportunities to participants including a pathway to State and National selection.

Gators Junior Try-Outs Information

Each year in October we hold try-outs for our Junior teams and we usually have several teams in each age group providing opportunities to athletes at different stages of development.

Our 1st Gators teams always aim to play Victorian Championship, the highest level of competition in the state. After Gators Try-outs, our teams enter Grading Phase 1 which commences in November & concludes in December requiring teams to play 4 Grading games.

After Christmas and the January Holiday, our Gator teams enter Grading Phase 2 which commences in February and concludes in March requiring teams to play 5-6 game.

This complex and structured grading phase allows teams to be correctly graded to balance the competition levels accordingly. During the Championship Season which runs from March until September, our Teams will play half the games  at Altona Stadium and other half away Stadiums.

Gators Teams have training for an hour and a half on Sundays and also have a mid-week training session. During the year our Junior Gator teams usually attend at least 2 Tournaments.

At Gators, we pride ourselves on providing pathways for our athletes to play at the highest level possible as our Director of Coaching Randy Shanklin is also a High-Performance Hub Coach at Basketball Victoria and can provide you with further information with respect to basketball pathways.

Our players are encouraged to attend Basketball Victoria camps throughout the year. We are very proud of our athletes who have been selected for the State Development Program, State Teams and National Teams.