The Western Special Needs Basketball Club has been training every week for the last seven months and now the players are just weeks away from their first-ever competition.
The club is the first of its kind in the region, specifically designed to accommodate children with a range of physical and mental challenges.
Co-founder and Assistant Coach Kylie Bozanic said special needs basketball leagues existed on the east side of Melbourne, and the idea for a western league had been met with a lot of interest from local families.
The club was open to anyone with additional needs who wanted to give the sport a go.
"Anyone with additional needs, motor skill issues, anything physical intellectual disabilities, anyone who want to play can play under the special needs rule," Coach Bozanic said.
The benefits of the program were evident. Support worker Lynne Ainslie said her client Tylah Shillington hated to miss a training session, even during school holidays.
"She gets very upset during the school holidays, I have to explain to her why she's missing basketball," she said.
"Tylah just loves it, and when she achieves the task set out by the coach, the look on her face is just priceless."
And it's not just about developing ball skills. Wendy Barton, the great aunt of player Zoe Mitchell, said the benefits of being involved with the team have overflowed into other areas of Zoe's life.
"It's made her more confident at school and she's starting doing work experience. So it's all confidence building and it's really good," she said.
Most of the players had never trained in team sports prior to joining the club. Assistant coach Kylie Bozanic said the first few months posed a challenge for the coaches.
"We had kids running off the court, running out of the stadium then coming back in. Just trying to get those ball skills up was quite tricky, but within a couple of months they had them down."
At the end of this month the Western Special Needs Basketball club will compete in the McKinnon Tournament in Melbourne's eastern suburbs, for Lindsay Gaze Cup.
"This is my first time in a competition like a team, and I'm so excited," player Zoe Mitchell said.
Victory is the short-term goal but long term it's hoped players will transition into mainstream basketball leagues.
Club president C-J Bonney said the coaches were working hard to prepare the kids to one day join a team in the local able bodied, or wheelchair basketball leagues.
"Hopefully we can get some of the kids out there. That's our main goal is to help them progress into mainstream," she said.
Organisers have been applying for government grants to fund the program but have so far been unsuccessful.
