The sun is out, the days are getting longer and the Wangaratta Warriors are about to launch into their junior tournament season. This weekend, a battalion of 12 junior teams from under 12s to under 18s will head across to Echuca-Moama for the Moama Bowling Club Echuca-Moama Junior Tournament, their first foray into the 2026/27 representative season, which runs across the summer culminating in the Junior Country Championships in April. Wangaratta Basketball Inc junior coordinator Mimma Cannata said the juniors were eager to hit the court and represent their town. “Everyone’s really excited, all the juniors are really looking forward to the weekend,” she said. “We’ve started our season a little bit earlier this year, training’s been well underway for a good couple of months now, so they’re really excited to hit the courts and have a really good crack this weekend. “The boys sides are always really popular but we’d always love to see more girls on the court representing Wangaratta. “We’ve got a lot going on too with our domestic [program], just trying to get them more involved in domestic and then hopefully they’ll want to put the jersey on for Wangaratta as a representative. “We’ve got one team representing each age group for the girls, and at least two teams representing each age group for the boys. “Our 16s and 18s numbers are big this year, we’ve got some larger pools, but it’s just going to be something we can keep growing in the next few years as well. “In a perfect world we’d love to have division one and two in both boys and girls over all age groups, that would be ideal, but that’s starting to get there.” With the Echuca tournament marking the start of the representative season, it’s unclear how the local squads will fare against teams from across the region and state, but there are a few teams well poised to go deep into the tournament this weekend. “The under 14 boys, on the weekend just past we had four athletes attend the [Basketball Victoria Country] jamboree which was over in Echuca,” Cannata said. “They’ve been recognised as some strong players in country Victoria, so that’s a team that is looking quite strong. “The under 15 boys and under 18 boys, those two division one teams have got some good talent in there, so hopefully they can have a successful weekend.” The junior representative season kicks off this weekend at Echuca, with matches commencing on Friday afternoon.
