Our student baseball and softball club recorded their most successful season this past academic year. We catch up with the club’s outgoing President, Jaryd Mercer, to find out more.
The baseball club was founded in 2016 and has gone from strength to strength, taking on the name ‘the Durham Wolves’ to symbolise the team’s strong sense of community and camaraderie. They have set the bar high, consistently competing in national competitions, and connecting with more senior teams in North East England.
The 1’s baseball team are reigning UK champions in the British Universities and Colleges Sport (BUCS), having successfully defended their title this year. The team proved their prowess on the field, maintaining ‘undefeated’ status throughout.
The softball squad was added later in 2022, taking a mere three years to place second in the UK in their first BUCS nationals. Their strength in a short period of time is reflected in the calibre of the teams they have defeated – powerhouses like Loughborough University and the University of Central Lancashire.
The club owes its success to a number of factors, one of them being their outgoing president, Jaryd Mercer (Biological Sciences, Josephine Butler College, 2022-25).
Jaryd has been one of the main students who has driven the sport at the University. He was awarded the Head of Sport Award at the recent Palatinate Awards – which is awarded to the most outstanding Club President / Captain for the year. I have been impressed by his vision and exceptional leadership, which has seen the club embrace the university’s international student community, increase its membership, and actively participate in outreach around the world.
We catch up with him (pictured below) to find out how he has helped to evolve the Durham Wolves into one of Durham’s up-and-coming sports clubs. -----
I’ve been a member of the club for each of the three years of my degree, having taken on coaching roles in my second year, before becoming president in my final year. In that time the club has grown considerably - with BUCS National Championships the last two years.
Being part of the Durham Wolves has been a core part of my time at Durham University. It has anchored me through difficult periods of personal and academic challenges, and has encapsulated a central part of most students’ experience at Durham – the opportunity to explore passions and build relationships with people who share those passions.
For me, the heart of our success has been the depth of our players’ engagement.
We expanded into slow-pitch softball in 2022, with excellent results. The squad qualified for its first ever national championships this year en-route to a second-place finish following victories over more well-established teams.
Alongside some amazing success on the field, we’ve also seen record participation among women – both in baseball and softball – and increased accessibility for interested players with little to no experience. In the forthcoming 2025/26 year, for the first time we will have more softball players sitting in positions on our executive committee than baseball players, continuing to expand our club on two fronts. Women now make up roughly 30% of club members, and thanks to collaborations we have run with initiatives like DU Women in Sport, we’re set for record participation again in 2025/26.
I’m also very proud of the feeling of building a real culture around the sport. Since its founding in 2016, the club has always had a core of die-hard baseball fans who have laid the foundations for the current club – but increasingly we’re composed of a mixed bunch with varying levels of skill and experience. We have been a point of entry for hundreds of students at the University, who have come to the club knowing a bare minimum about baseball, or maybe having been passionate fans of Major League Baseball, but with limited opportunity to actually play. With a first and second team competing in the BUCS Baseball Northern division, and a team in the Softball Northern division we provide considerable opportunity to play competitively.
Yes! We’ve worked hard to establish ourselves as a truly diverse and inclusive sports club. One of the unique aspects of the Durham Wolves is the degree to which we bring in students from all sorts of backgrounds. In the 2024/25 academic year, our captain, Ernesto Valverde, came in as an international student from Ecuador. In previous years we have had captains from Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan, and of course the UK. I myself am Austrian-American, currently based in Switzerland. Our membership has included students from across the EU - like France, Austria, and Denmark – alongside students from countries like India, Pakistan, and Singapore.
Over 2024/25 we had students from 13 different countries on our teams, including South Korea, Australia, Canada, Japan, and China.
Absolutely. Something we have started to do, over and above regular training sessions, practices, and taster sessions, has been to harness the expertise of more experienced players.
We have had the privilege of welcoming four baseball postgraduate students from NCAA (National Collegiate Athletic Association) programmes over the last two years. These students were part of the Postgraduate Sports Scholarship programme offered by the University. We enveloped them into our club culture and in turn, the scholars have embraced the enthusiasm of the students and provided invaluable experience through playing and coaching. This guidance has accelerated the development of other students with little or no experience, and played a pivotal role in their enjoyment. We even recruited two softball scholars to join us this year who helped the team achieve its best ever finish.
We’ve benefited a lot in this area from the formation of a new regional baseball league in 2022. The North East Baseball League (NEBL) has allowed us to expand opportunities to stretch our stronger players, as well as boost beginner player development.
We’ve also taken steps to collaborate extensively with local clubs, like the Newcastle Nighthawks and County Durham Spartans, to improve our connections with more senior teams. Alumnus Paul Brown currently captains the Nighthawks and has offered a critical bridge between the University team and the wider baseball scene in the region. This seems to be having an impact already - while we’re a relatively new club, I’m delighted that our graduates have already gone on to play with clubs across the country. We have alumni at the Edinburgh Diamond Devils, Leicester Blue Sox, and London Mets, and even abroad with players in Paris, Lausanne, and Copenhagen.
While we all enjoy playing, we don’t just do that! We get involved in a number of club community and outreach projects, notably working with the African Higher Education in Emergencies Network (AHEEN) and the World Baseball & Softball Confederation (WBSC) to provide English tutors for refugee student athletes in the Kakuma-Kalobeyei refugee camp in Kenya. Part of the WBSC programme is to introduce baseball to the camp, to train a refugee team to compete in the 2026 Youth Summer Olympic Games.
We also run an annual fundraising campaign in November for the Movember Foundation, to raise money in support of men’s mental health and cancer awareness. In 2024/25, for us this included a marathon walk along the River Wear, ending on the North Sea coast in Sunderland.
We’ve been given the incredible opportunity to establish our very own diamond on University grounds, and with growing interest in the sport across the region and the country, I’m really optimistic for the future of our club and the sport.
Working together with incoming executive committee members, we’ve developed a long-term plan prioritising improved infrastructure – with a goal of expanding to include a dedicated softball diamond, increase fencing coverage, and acquire a pitching machine - alongside expanded participation which we hope will make us a key hub for the sport in the region and in the country.
I applied to Durham largely because of its reputation and because I found the college town environment to be really appealing. I had also read really good things about my degree (Biosciences) and I believe it was also well ranked when I applied. Settling into the UK was pretty tough at first but ultimately I'm really glad I made the choice to come here. I found a really great community with baseball, and I ended up really enjoying my degree and the faculty were incredibly supportive.
Besides baseball and my studies, I got involved with the beekeeping society in my second year, which was really interesting! I was involved in my College (Josephine Butler) Board Games society too, and the University Games society where I did some tabletop role-playing games. I also played a little bit of College football before I had to stop due to injury and I tried out rounders, but I ultimately much prefer baseball.
My next move is to head to Cambridge to pursue a masters in genomic medicine - I'm then hoping to work in the NHS if I get the opportunity.
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