Junior basketball tournaments in Victoria

What a tournament weekend actually is

A tournament is a whole competition squeezed into a long weekend. Your child's team plays pool games across two or three days, and if they go well they keep playing into finals on the last day.

It sits on top of the season, not instead of it. Friday night VJBL keeps running, and the tournament is extra basketball on a weekend most families had earmarked for something else.

That's the honest trade. You get a huge amount of basketball in a short window, and you give up the long weekend to get it.

The Eltham Dandenong tournament

The Eltham Dandenong Junior Basketball Tournament, usually shortened to EDJBT, runs on the Australia Day long weekend in January. It bills itself as the largest junior tournament in the Southern Hemisphere and it draws interstate and international teams.

It's graded properly, which matters. A Grade is capped and aimed at Victorian Championship level. A Reserve sits just under it. B Grade is pitched at VJL1 to VJL4 teams, and C Grade at regional division teams. There's a domestic teams category as well, so it isn't rep only.

Entries go through PlayHQ. The entry fee covers stadium entry for players, coaches and spectators, so you aren't paying a door fee every time you walk back in.

The Nunawading Spectres tournament

Nunawading runs its tournament on the King's Birthday long weekend in June, out of the Nunawading Basketball Centre on Burwood Highway in Burwood East.

It is enormous. The 2025 tournament ran 1,158 teams across the weekend, which makes it one of the largest junior tournaments in the country.

Divisions fill fast. If your child's team wants in, the coach needs to be watching for registrations opening rather than assuming there'll be room later.

The rest of the long weekend calendar

Basketball Victoria keeps a list of association tournaments, and most of them land on or near a long weekend. These are the ones on the calendar at the time of writing.

Dates move year to year, so treat this as the shape of the calendar rather than something to book flights around. Confirm with the host association before you commit.

What it costs a family

The entry fee is usually paid by the team or the club, not by you directly, and it gets passed on as a tournament levy.

The real cost is the weekend. Two or three days of driving to a stadium, meals out, and a tired child by Monday. For a regional tournament you can add accommodation on top.

Ask the coach early what the tournament plan is for the season. Finding out in December that the team is entered in three of them is a rough way to plan a year.

Should your child do one

If they're in a rep team, the decision is usually made for them, because the team enters as a team.

If it's optional, the thing worth weighing is how much basketball they've already had. A kid who's played a full winter season and is enjoying it will get a lot out of a tournament. A kid who's had enough by June will not, and pushing it is how you turn a sport they like into a chore.

The basketball itself is genuinely good for them. Playing five or six games against unfamiliar teams in three days teaches more than a month of training does.