With some new announcements of the return to Community Sport, DVBA are looking to finalise what the planned return to competitions and basketball will look like.

All below is tentative and may change at any stage. Decisions are based on rules, regulations and advice from the Victorian Government, Health Department, Basketball Victoria and Sport and Recreation Victoria.

Key Dates (All dependant on Referee and venue availability):

November 4th: Further details released on return to basketball
November 7th: Representative Trials
November 8th: Senior Domestic start
November 12th: Representative Trials
November 13th: Junior Domestic Spring Season start
November 14th: Representative Trials
November 21st: U8 officiating education session
November 28th: U8 officiating education session
December 3rd: VJBL season start

Dates and venues
One of the greatest challenges we face upon return will be the availability of school venues. As it stands, some schools have not been able to give us a clear indication of their availability. If we cannot use school venues, this will severely impact how our competition looks upon return.

If all our school venues are available, then we aim to start the Spring season on November 13th. This will allow clubs about over a week to train indoors before competition commences.

The Spring season will run from November 13th, all the way through to 25th June 2022.
All current registrations stand, and player’s age groups for the current Spring season will carry through till the end of the season.

Byes
Week 1 – U17 Girls & U16 Boys
Week 2 – U10 Boys & U8 Girls
Week 3 – U10 Girls & U8 Boys

Venue Capacity and Restrictions
While Basketball Victoria indicated the lifting of vaccination requirements for community sport, we are still awaiting the individual venue limitations. We also are not aware of the full restrictions, capacity requirements or spectator limits venues will put in place.

Referees
Another massive challenge is referee availability. As you would have seen in our Referee Action Plan, we are doing everything we can to get referee numbers up. Even with the byes for the first three weeks, filling the U8s games with volunteer referees and bringing back ex referees, we may still not be able to fill all remaining games. This is mainly due to a lot of referees taking time off for exams and the losses incurred from lockdown. Due to lack of games, coaches and timing, the only referees we can add to the mix are the U8s educated volunteers and ex referees.

We will know by November 4th where we sit with this.

If all goes well, we will hold the education sessions for people to referee U8s games on Sunday the 21st and the 28th with the trained being able to referee U8 games from Week 4. Week 1-3 for U8s will be officiated by normal referees. Registration and further information for these sessions will be released shortly.

Representative Trials
To ensure we get more training and practice games in, we are moving the dates forward for the Eagles Representative Trials to the following dates: 7th Nov, 12th Nov and 14th Nov.

Summary
By November 4th, if in the situation where school venues are not available and/or we cannot fill the required games with referees, we will decide what the first six weeks of the season looks like.

Our priority is getting kids back playing basketball, and we will do whatever we can within our power and within restrictions to do so safely.