GREEN DUKES COME FROM BEHIND TO TOP OREGON STATE 2-1

The Duqueswood University Green Dukes took a big step toward salvaging their NCBB season with a come from behind 2-1 win over the Oregon State Reavers this weekend. After falling behind 1-0 on a Reaver TD by receiver Ivan Eleg, the Green Dukes got successive touchdowns from freshman wardancer Angorn Windfoot ’26 (undeclared) and sophomore thrower Elehorn Oakhand ’25 (quantitative root-conomics) to earn the victory and get to 3-5 on the year, with the hope of reaching .500 by the end of the team’s inaugural season.

“This was a big step for us,” said Green Dukes Coach Gerric Smithson after the game. “We had a lot to be distracted about coming into this week. Disciplinary hearings, scribe-manufactured rumors about wardancer rivalries, the team captain still not able to stand up without vomiting blood … But the squad really pulled together and got all of their ears pointing in the same direction.”

Early on, however, it looked bad for the Green Dukes when Oregon State’s human squad put together one of the most resilient scoring drives this scribe has seen on a Blood Bowl pitch. Reaver thrower Zion Phlith lost the ball three times on the drive, once on a blitz behind the line of scrimmage by Styril Sidehill ’26 (dryad anthropology), once by Windfoot around the 40 yard line, and then finally by Zephyra Gettleaf ’26 (double major: Oakish, women’s & arbor studies), who knocked out the better half of Phlith’s teeth with a flying front-kick to the face. (Gettleaf’s brutal kick would have knocked Phlith out of this game and the next, but for the Oregon State apothecary’s deft work on the sidelines with a leather strap and some boiled wine.)


Gettleaf separates Phlith from the ball (and a few of his teeth) for the third time on the Reavers’ opening drive, with a flying kick to the jaw

Duqueswood freshman thrower Bryden Branch ’26 (udeclared) quickly recovered the ball, spun away from the Reaver defenders and headed up field, amid a cage of wood elf linemen. But when Oregon State ogre Kargg Kepler headed them off at midfield, Branch made the rash decision to dart out of the cage and across midfield to hand off to Jorel Birdsong, with the hope of scoring before the end of the half. When Reaver blitzer Roman Kro broke up the hand off, it looked like the first half would end in a tie, with the ball now 60 yards from paydirt for Oregon State.

But the Reavers didn’t hang their heads and give up. After a few key blocks to free up space around the ball, blitzer Shane Solar sprinted for it, scooped it up, and in one motion heaved the ball down field toward Eleg. The human catcher easily caught the miraculously on-target long bomb, and waltzed into the end-zone untouched, leaving the Green Dukes stunned.


Solar puts everything into his throw as he makes to long bomb downfield to Eleg

With just 5 seconds left before the end of the half, Duqueswood looked content to go into halftime down 1-0. But then Windfoot and Coach Smithson appeared to get into an argument on the sideline, and the Green Dukes came out in a formation they’d never used before.

“My focus was making sure nobody got hurt before we went into the half,” Coach Smithson explained in the post-game press conference. “It was bad enough to give up that late score. I was just thinking, get into half time, get focused, and come out and regroup for the second half. But then Windfoot starts hopping around, shouting in elvish something that sounds like ‘un tirn tee dee ... un tirn tee dee.’ I got no idea what ‘un tirn’ means, but then Sidehill comes over and tells he he’s just saying ‘five-second touchdown’ in elvish.”

Growing up in the Loren Forest, Windfoot had seen professional elven teams orchestrate these kinds of scores with a complex series of chain blocks at the end of a half or in the closing seconds of a game. But as he explained it to Smithson through Sidehill’s translation, the old-world human coach wasn’t convinced.

“I didn’t think it was possible,” he explained. “But me and Windfoot have come a long way this season. Kid came here not speaking a word of the common tongue, still afraid of metal, only can sleep on grass. It’s been a rough transition. I keep forgetting to wear shoes without bronze buckles, and I know he’s got a lot of pressure on him with Spinleaf out this game, so I thought, why not give him a shot. I look him in the eye, and I say, ‘Can you do it?’ He looks back with those angry red eyes, and for the first time I hear him use the common tongue, and all he says, ‘I’ll make it.’ ”

Setting up with the northern side of the line of scrimmage overloaded but a space open next to Windfoot, Greeny Bullwind ’26 (history of dirt) blitzed Reaver lineman Carmin Gustav, pushing him into the open space next to Windfoot. While the kick-off was still in the air, Gettleaf, Garon Streamsong ’25 (molecular acorn analytics), and Jorel Bridsong ’26 (undeclared), followed up, pushing Gustav into Windfoot in successive blocks to give the wardancer the momentum he needed to get down field as fast as possible. With the chain-blocks giving Windfoot the speed of a mutated gutter runner hopped up on warpstone dust, Elehorn Oakhand scooped up the kick-off, with the clock only starting after he touched the ball. The elf thrower immediately heaved the ball downfield to a streaking Windfoot, who snatched it out of the air, sprinted for the end zone and dove across the goal line just as the half-time whistle blew.


While the kicked ball is still in the air, Gettleaf, Streamsong, and Birdsong, push Gustav into Windfoot to give him the speed he needs to score a 5-second touchdown, or as he called it in elvish, an “un tirn tee dee”

Windfoot’s heroics seemed to turn the game around, as the Green Dukes used the momentum of his tying score to dominate the second half with a long touchdown drive that consisted of Oakhand slowly following his blockers down field for the winning score. In the process Sidehill caused two more casualties, which, when added to Gettleaf’s first half casualty, brought the team total for the game to 3—a season high for the squad.

“Hey, plays like that ‘un tirn’ thing in the first half are great,” said Coach Smithson. “But when I saw that for the first time this year we were actually going to end the game with more of our players standing upright on the field than the other team, I thought, OK, boys, time to play some orc-ball here.”

So though Oakhand kept looking for passes or dodges to make, Smithson signaled the team to slow down from the sidelines. Oakhand and his blockers—even Windfoot—listened, and they milked the clock to score with only seconds left, giving the team its first win in the last four weeks.

The victory, however, may be only the second most important recent development for Smithson’s coaching career. Earlier in the week, the investigation into his potentially improper recruitment tactics concluded as Gettleaf offered her testimony to the Duqueswood University Department of Student Safety. The department was looking into whether Smithson promising Gettleaf access to treeman Oakward Weatherborn ’26 (undeclared) if she joined the team broke the rules forbidding the use of academic research access as compensation for engaging in violence. After Gettleaf spoke before the Duqueswood administration, however, all charges were dropped, and the university’s VP of Student Safety Baerys Pondripple asked Smithson if his son could try out for the team.

What follows is an excerpt from Gettleaf’s testimony, which was delivered shortly before the Smithson was cleared of all wrongdoing:

“Coach Smithson stands accused of coercing me to engage in violence, but I have now played in two games of Blood Bowl, and last week I had my first successful block with a flying scissor kick to a high-elf catcher. With all due respect to this department, I have to say what I engaged in was not mere violence. As my foot met his face, I understood at once the glorious poetry of this beautiful sport. Seeing your opponent’s blood and tooth fragments spray across the blue sky before you—this is not violence. This is art. Hearing your opponent’s screams as he lies on the field writhing in pain—this is not violence. This is music. Seeing your opponent’s limp body dragged off the pitch—this is not violence. This is dance. This is what our ancestors understood when they fought to build our woodland home, and this is what we can never forget—what you would have us forget if you take Coach Smithson away, if you take Blood Bowl away. For, to paraphrase the great elven poet, Jyhn Keatswind, here is what this great sport teaches: ‘blood is beauty, beauty blood. That is all ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.’”


Flanked by Coach Smithson and Oakward Weatherborn ’26 (undeclared) Gettleaf delivers her impassioned testimony before the Duqueswood University Department of Student Safety

Next up, the Green Dukes will have their hands full as they try to inch closer to .500 vs. the Marshall Thundering Herd, a dominant Chaos Chosen squad that currently stands at 5-1-1.