A BASEBALL club is looking for new players in preparation for re-entering the Northern Baseball League next season.

The club – which plays in the Northern Baseball League – was formed in 2011 as the Newton Aycliffe Spartans before changing its name in 2016 to County Durham Spartans.

The league covers teams from Newcastle to Nottingham and Hull to Liverpool, with games being played on Sundays from April to September.

The team’s first year in the AA Division of the League was 2012 and since then it has performed well and won the AA Division of the league in 2015 and 2018.

Despite being crowned AA Division champions in 2018, the club almost folded when the number of players retiring or moving away from the area, left them with only four regular players.

Fortunately, the players that remained formed a committee to save the club with the aim of recruiting a squad of new players and training during the 2019 season to re-enter the league for the 2020 season.

With funding from Shildon Town Council and the County Durham Community Foundation the future of the club has been assured and all that is needed now is to find enough players.

Since the turn of the year, a number of new players have joined and have been training every Sunday morning at the club’s home on one of the fields at the Shildon Sunnydale Leisure Centre.