March is an important month for Sedgefield parkrun, a free community event where you can walk, jog, run, volunteer or spectate.

Our local event in Hardwick Park takes place at 9am every Saturday. We will be celebrating our 600th event on Saturday 1 March and our 13th birthday on Saturday 15 March. A celebratory singsong is planned prior to the event on these two dates.

Since Sedgefield parkrun was set up by local runner Jane Spink with a team of volunteers, over 1,000 people have volunteered and over 15,000 people have taken part, improving their physical and mental health along the way.

The County Masters tournament was hosted by Redcar Squash Club in January. This is a competition based on various age groups, the youngest being over 35 with no upper age limit. Sedgefield Squash Club was well represented across several age groups, resulting in appearances in a few of the finals. Sedgefield’s successes were:

Colin Langley won the over 40s, with Francis Jones runner up
Patrick Billany won the over 50s
Ian Williams was runner up in the over 60s
Gordon Peden was plate winner in the over 60s.

That’s an impressive haul of titles at county level for the club!

Back on the home courts, the Individual Handicap final was contested between Stephen Rowsby and Oliver Walls, watched by a lively crowd of spectators, who were treated to a five-game thriller. The winner on the night was Oliver Walls - many congratulations to him.

Three club members were picked for the Durham & Cleveland County squad to play in Carlisle against Northumbria, Cumbria and Lancashire. Congratulations go to Rob Pearce and Oliver Walls, and to Matthew Bond who was making his debut for the county.

The last few weeks have seen record numbers of members playing in the internal leagues and squash friendlies. This is a very encouraging statistic and is in part down to the new booking and payment system that the club invested in last year, called Manage My Match.

The county has a junior coaching programme in place and Sedgefield was proud to be asked to host this on a Sunday morning in February, when junior players of all ages come together from various clubs to improve their technical and match playing skills.

If you would like to get involved in squash or racket ball, you can contact the club at info@sedgefieldsquashclub.co.uk.

With the 2025 cricket season due to get underway over the Easter weekend, the volunteers at Sedgefield Cricket Club are aiming to introduce live streaming of all home matches, with the purchase of the wonderfully named Frogbox equipment.

To buy this, the club needs to raise funds, and so on Saturday 22 March, four players will embark on an ultra-marathon run from Bedale CC to Sedgefield CC, a distance of about 35 miles (they had originally planned the run for February, as reported last month).

Bedale is the most distant opponent that the 1st XI will face during the season ahead and so Ben Swindale, Luke Henderson, Phil Reynard and David Budd have been training hard for this endurance test. All sponsorship and donations, however small will be hugely appreciated—you can find out more at https://gofund.me/c327ffe0.

I have covered the exploits of Sedgefield boccia star Lee Maddison in the past.

Lee continues to perform brilliantly at an elite level and recently, with his ramp assistant Chris, came first in the Boccia England National Championship qualifying round, which means that he has qualified for the national finals. Lee has also set up a boccia club (Tees Valley Tigers) and the North East Boccia Hub, which invites players old and new from the region to train with high level guest coaches at quality training venues.

The club is seeking a kit sponsor (needing around £1,500 each year to equip all of the players), and Lee is also looking for sponsorship so he can continue to represent England and push on in his quest to represent Great Britain in the Paralympic Games. Any business or individual that is interested in supporting Lee can send me an email and I will put you in touch with Lee.

The season is now well advanced for St Edmund’s FC and (at the time of writing), the club is still in two cup competitions. St. Edmund’s face Witton Park in the County Cup (on 23 February), a team they have already played three times this season in other competitions, and also have a semi-final in the League Cup to look forward to.

Due to cup runs and bad weather, St Edmund’s have only played nine league games all season (compared to 11 cup games!).

With 13 league fixtures left to fulfil, and hopefully more progress in the cups, the club faces a hectic end to the season, which is supposed to finish in the first week in May

Karl Thompson, originally from Sedgefield, is now UK cruiserweight champion in bare knuckle fighting. Karl needed just 106 seconds to take the vacant crown at the Bare Knuckle Fighting Championship (BKFC) United Kingdom event in Newcastle in February.

After hitting the canvas himself, Karl, known as ‘The Wasp’, picked himself up and dropped his opponent Rob Boardman. Karl is undefeated in four BKFC fights.