Most first games are over inside an hour. Your child warms up for five minutes, plays four short quarters with a break between each one, and rotates on and off the bench. Most junior games have one or two referees. Nobody expects a new player to know the rules yet, and at the youngest ages the scoreboard matters far less to the kids than it does to the adults watching it.
Written by Cameron James, founder and head coach at Liddicoat Basketball. Over a decade coaching junior basketball in Melbourne, including at Big V level, and rep teams from Under 12s through to Under 18s.
Last updated September 2026.
Turn up about twenty minutes before the scheduled start. You need time to find the venue, find the right court out of the six or eight inside it, find the team, and let your child stand next to a coach for a few minutes before anything begins. That last part does more for a nervous nine year old than anything you can say in the car.
Victorian stadiums are busy places. Basketball Victoria describes basketball here as a year round indoor sport with games played in over 500 stadiums across the state, and on a Saturday morning a mid sized one will have every court running at once. Courts are numbered on the wall. Your fixture gives you a court number, a time and a team name, and those three things are all you actually need.
If you're running late, go straight to the court rather than looking for an office. Coaches sort it out. What you want to avoid is your child walking into a loud stadium on their own.
Your child will be handed or issued a singlet with a number on it. Basketball Victoria's National Junior Classic playing conditions allow numbers 1 to 99, keep 0 and 00 for the spare singlets kept aside for a player who has to change because of blood on their uniform, and don't permit two players in the same team to wear the same number. If your club hasn't sorted a uniform yet, say so to the coach before the game rather than at the door. Those are the rules for Basketball Victoria's junior tournaments rather than for your Saturday game. Your association writes its own by laws for domestic basketball and they're often different, so check yours for the rules that actually govern your child.
A team can list up to twelve players for a game, so your child will spend part of the morning sitting down. That's normal and it's not a verdict on them. Substitutions happen at whistles. The coach calls a name, the player coming off walks to the bench, and play restarts.
One small thing that helps: write your surname somewhere on the singlet bag. In a stadium with eight courts, singlets go missing every single weekend.
Junior games are short. Under Basketball Victoria's National Junior Classic playing conditions, Under 12 games run as four seven minute quarters and Under 14, Under 16 and Under 18 run as four eight minute quarters, with a five minute warm up before the start. Quarter time and three quarter time breaks are one minute each and half time is two minutes.
The clock stops on whistles, so the elapsed time is longer than the playing time. Plan on roughly an hour in the building at Under 12 and a little more above that. If the scores are level at the end, an extra period of three minutes is played, then two minutes, then one minute for any period after that.
Teams get two time outs in the first half and three in the second, so there are a couple of extra pauses that aren't on the schedule.
Junior games are often refereed by teenagers, some of them only a year or two older than the players. They will miss things, and they're meant to let some things go. Basketball Victoria's own guidance to officials is to interpret rules to match the skill level and needs of the participants, and to use common sense so that the spirit of the game isn't lost by overcalling technical violations.
At Under 12 there's no shot clock, the countdown that limits how long a team can hold the ball before shooting, so your child's never under time pressure. Travelling, which means moving the feet illegally while holding the ball, and double dribble, which means starting a second dribble after stopping, tend to be called loosely in the first weeks of a season and more tightly later on, which is deliberate rather than inconsistent.
None of this is worth a word from the sideline. The referee is the only person in the building being asked to make decisions in half a second, and they're usually fifteen.
Most kids are completely fine the moment the ball goes up and quietly terrified for the ten minutes before it. Some cry. Some refuse to go on for the first quarter. Some score and look genuinely startled. All of that's an ordinary first morning and none of it tells you anything about the next three years.
The pattern I see most often is a child who plays a perfectly good game and comes off convinced they were hopeless, because they touched the ball less than they imagined they would. Touches are shared between ten players in a short game. Six or seven in a first game is normal and it's not a problem.
Teams usually shake hands or line up for high fives, the coach says something brief, and everyone leaves. Resist the urge to run a review in the car. Ask what the best bit was, let them answer, and change the subject.
If you want one useful job for the drive home, learn the names of two other kids in the team and use them next week. Children stay in this sport because of who is in the car park as much as because of the basketball.
About an hour for Under 12. Basketball Victoria's National Junior Classic playing conditions set Under 12 at four seven minute quarters and Under 14 and above at four eight minute quarters, with a five minute warm up, one minute breaks at quarter time and three quarter time, and two minutes at half time. The clock stops on whistles, so allow more than the playing time.
No. Teams can list up to twelve players and the coach rotates them. Sitting on the bench for part of a game is standard at junior level and isn't a judgement on your child.
That's expected at a first game. Officials are guided to interpret rules to suit the skill level of the players. Your child will pick up travelling, out of bounds and which way to run within a few weeks of actually playing.
Yes, briefly, about practical things like a missing uniform or an injury. Leave tactics and playing time for another day and another channel.
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Facts on this page were compiled from the official sources below and written up in our own words. Dates, fees and venues change every season, so confirm anything you are relying on with the association directly.
This page was last updated September 2026. Spotted something wrong? Tell us.
Tryout windows, grading, key dates and what each level actually costs. Written for Victorian basketball parents, sent when something matters, not every week.