A group of ice hockey enthusiasts, inspired by the Mighty Durham Wasps, began meeting at the famous Riverside Rink in Durham City about 1980 to knock a few pucks about the ice.  There were similar teams in other rinks and they soon began to arrange games against each other.

    From this the beginning of Recreational Ice Hockey was born.  Durham Dragons, Cleveland Comets and Solihul Vikings were three of the founder teams.  The Dragons were affiliated to the Recreational Section of the EIHA in 1986 and have played in each of the Championship Tournament held in Telford each year since.

The high points of the teams success were winning the Telford Championships in 1989 and the Radio Cleveland Trophy in 1990.  The low point was the closing of the ice rink in Durham in 1996.  Without any ice or any future, a number of the dedicated team members decided to stick together and they met each week in a local pub.  The other members deciding to defect to other clubs in the area or to stop playing all together, leaving nine regular players to keep the Durham Dragons alive.

    From September 1996 to February 1997, the team relied upon occasional ice time at the Newcastle Arena.  It was in February of 1997 that a regular contract was negotiated at the Crowtree Leisure Centre in Sunderland.  At last some light at the end of the tunnel.  Although the teams future seemed a lot more secure it was to take a further 3 years to re-build the team.  Players came and went, but the nucleus of the team remained, determined to become one of the best recreational teams in the country.  The team morale never weakened during the hard times and bad results.

    During the winter months of 1999 the team had taken the quickest U-turn imaginable, with a combination of dedicated existing players and the recent influx of experienced Ex Durham Wasps, youngsters from the Durham Junior Clubs and a certain French Canadian by the name of Claude Boucher.  The following few months saw the Dragons rack up some inspiring results against our local rivals Whitley Bay and Cleveland.  The turn around also helped us regain some much wanted silverware.  We beat Kingston to take the D+P Discount Trophies Challenge Cup,  we annihilated the Peterlee Penguins to take back the County Durham Shield and most enjoyable was a 6-0 victory over the Cleveland Comets for our third piece of silverware in five months.

    The new millennium brought more fortune with the announcement of a sponsorship deal with Turner's Alarms & Audio.  This provided the team with much needed new shirts and socks.  Telford 2000 saw a vast improvement on recent years.  In 1999 we were seen as having good spirit but not having any hope.  Oh it was different in 2000, the tide had changed and the Dragons went to Telford with every belief that we would win it.  We cruised through the Group stages after beating Grimsby, drawing 1-1 with the fancied London Legion, and then beating the host team Telford in record breaking style, 9-0.  Then we became the team nobody wanted to play.  We got through the quarters against Kingston on penalty shots, but were knocked out at at the semi-final stage by a strong Sheffield team.  Although we didn't win it, we came away with two things that night.  The highest team morale and spirit ever seen and secondly,  knowing that in 2001 we will be better and stronger than ever before.

A new season and another rink closure saw the Dragons once again ousted from their 'home' rink of Crowtree in Sunderland. So the team was forced to head north of the Tyne and to Whitley Bay, where they are currently based.  Boasting ex-Wasps John Hutley, Chris Hall, Karl Walker and Peter Herkes in their ranks, the Dragons are increasingly becoming an outfit to be reckoned with on the recreational circuit and will be looking to the annual recreational tournament to bring some silverware back to Durham this summer.