Sport

About Team Durham

Team Durham is the home of Durham Sport. Our university teams are amongst the most successful in the country and in 2011/12 Durham University came 2nd in the British Universities & Colleges Sport (BUCS) points table. Team Durham focuses on the three core strands of performance and leadership, participation and community sport development. Our facilities at Maiden Castle and Queen's Campus, including gyms and fitness classes, are open to staff, students and the local community.

University Sport

Durham University supports an ever-growing number of high performing athletes and our teams are amongst the most successful in the country. Our performance teams in Basketball, Cricket, Fencing, Hockey, Lacrosse, Netball, Rowing, Rugby Union (Men's), Tennis and Volleyball are all supported by full-time coaching structures. Our philosophy at Durham is to provide opportunities in sport to allow exceptional people to do exceptional things. In this respect there can be few better shining examples than Will Carling, Nasser Hussain, Jonathan Edwards, Andrew Strauss and recent Olympic gold medalists Sophie Hoskings and Lily van den Broeke.

College Sport

Durham’s College Sport programme is larger than any other intra-mural competition offered in Britain and there is an opportunity for male and female students to participate in 15 sports, in over 380 different teams, on a weekly basis. The vast majority of the organisation for College Sport is student led and over 150 students are funded through National Governing Body courses on an annual basis.

Community Sport Development

Team Durham Community deliver sporting activities and programmes to a large number of schools and groups including drug rehabilitation clients, disengaged adolescent young girls, vulnerable women, homeless, looked after children and youth offenders. Manh student volunteers are involved in coaching and delivering activities. Find out more about the Team Durham Community team.

Facilities and Staff Teams

At the Graham Sports Centre in Durham and at Queen's Campus there are extensive facilities including gyms and fitness classes that are open to staff, students and local community members. The University also has a number of staff sports teams.

Silver & Bronze For Durham At BUCS Canoe Polo Championships

(22 April 2013)

Women’s Canoe Polo came agonisingly close to retaining the BUCS title but had to settle for a silver medal this time around.

The women started the weekend with a comfortable 4-0 victory over Cambridge before coming up against last year’s Semi Finalists ULU. Despite a close first half the Palatinates pulled away in the second period to secure a 5-1 victory.

The Semi Final saw Durham come up against a talented Bristol side and the opposition were more than deserved of their 1 goal advantage at the end of the first half. The second phase was a far more open affair with Durham equalising and Bristol answering back within a matter of seconds to edge back into the lead. As the time ticked on it looked as though Durham’s hopes were going with it but a fine solo goal from captain, Beth Barrett, forced the game in overtime.

It was clear that the golden goal situation was in all of the players’ minds as both teams started tentatively, seemingly determined not to give anything away and it was perhaps for this reason that the game went into a third phase of overtime before captain Beth Barrett stole the show to put the Palatinates into the final.

The final itself saw Durham come up against a talented Loughborough team who just had too much quality for the Palatinates. At 3-2 it looked like the match could go either way but Loughborough edged further and further in front to secure a 6-3 victory.

The men had an equally pleasing weekend. The Palatinate’s stormed through the early rounds but were made to work very hard against Nottingham in the Quarter Final with a golden goal penalty finally seeing off Nottingham. The Semi Final saw the Palatinates take on red hot favourites Sheffield Hallam but, whilst the game was much tighter than many would have predicted, Hallam were victorious to put an end to Durham’s assault on the title.

Outside of the BUCS Championship the men’s ‘B Team’ also had a fantastic weekend winning the National Second Team Championship – when considering that many of the B Team players were novices at the start of the year it is clear that the clubs development pathway is working well!

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