“GREEN DUKES MOVE TO 2-1 IN NCBB WITH SECOND STRAIGHT SHUTOUT

The Duqueswood University Green Dukes posted their second straight NCBB home shutout in a dominant but costly 3-0 win over the Central Michigan Chipper Waagh. Green Duke touchdowns came from freshman lineman Foren Longweed ’26 (mystical fauna studies) who rushed for 15 yards on the day, and team captain, sophomore wardancer Mirlin Spinleaf ’25 (tree-bark studies), who rushed for a game-high 39 yards, delivered 5 blocks and one casualty, and enjoyed his second straight 2-touchdown game.

Spinleaf opened the scoring after claiming the touchback kickoff near midfield and sprinting down the eastern sideline. The Green Dukes did their best to screen-block the Central Michigan orc squad, but Angorn Windfoot ’26 (undeclared) tripped as he tried to make a crack-back block from the weak side, leaving a huge opening for the Chipper Waagh defense to get to Spinleaf.

The orcs quickly took advantage, crowding around the isolated wardancer, drooling and snarling as they looked seconds away from pounding him into the grass. However, before they could, Central Michigan’s standout sophomore troll Josh Gordy scooped up freshman goblin Tony Elliot and hurled him toward Spinleaf. Gordy’s aim was slightly off, however, and a screaming Elliot landed instead directly on the head of the Chipper Waagh’s highly recruited freshman blitzer Walter Beach, knocking Beach unconscious and turning Elliot’s face into a bloody pulp. Momentarily stunned and blinded by Elliot’s blood, the orcs closing in on Spinleaf were distracted just long enough for the wardancer to sprint past and put the Green Dukes up 1-0.

“Just how we drew it up,” said Green Duke coach Gerric Smithson, still trying to get used to scripting plays on a pond with a magical blade of grass rather than in an actual playbook. “I mean, sure, that key block the screaming, flying goblin made, that was technically supposed to be Angorn’s block, but sometimes you can’t sweat the small stuff. A touchdown’s a touchdown.”

Central Michigan quickly mounted a drive that threatened to put the tying TD on the board before half time, as the sure-handed orc thrower freshman Nick Bellore caught the kickoff and quickly crossed midfield through a well-blocked hole. However, Windfoot, who’d been taken to the ground behind the play, scrambled to his feet and made a late-charging blind-side blitz, delivering a flying kick to Bellore’s kidney, separating him from the ball and leaving him gagging on his own blood and unable to play for the rest of the match.

Shockingly, Chipper Waagh big un orc blocker Jahleel Addae caught the fumbled ball on one bounce and managed to charge downfield in the right direction. Before he could get too far, however, freshman Green Duke lineman Greeny Bullwind ’26 (history of dirt) leapt onto Addae’s back and clung for dear life until he wrestled the hulking green brute to the ground.

This left the ball surrounded in a scrum of orcs and elves along the western sideline until freshman goblin Eric Fisher tried to dodge past Bullwind and pick up the ball. Still recovering from taking down Addae, Bullwind was able trip up the agile and diminutive Fisher, who tumbled onto the ball sending to bouncing off several elven and orcish hands before it flew off the pitch and into the stands.

The Green Duke faithful in attendance at the Uther J. Rune-Elf Athletic Field Stadium hurled the ball back onto the pitch, right at Spinleaf’s feet. With seconds ticking down toward the end of the first half, Spinleaf knew he only had one chance.

“I saw Longweed up toward midfield trying to hold off this orc lineman, who already had one hand wrapped around his throat,” Spinleaf explained after the game. “But then I saw Rainwalker all by himself out there like he was picking dandelions or something—which, to be fair, he does need to do each week for our Woodland Flora 101 class, but there’s a time and a place, right? So I’m like, Rainwalker, look alive, man, put that green beast on his back!”

Kioric Rainwalker ’25 (creative foliage) did just as he was told, blitzing upfield to knock orc lineman Ray Bentley off of Foren Longweed ’26 (undeclared), as Spinleaf scooped up the ball and raced toward Longweed. With a diving handoff, Spinleaf got the ball to Longweed in the clear, and the freshman lineman scored the first touchdown of his career to put the Green Dukes up 2-0 at halftime.

“Yeah, that play not so much,” Smithson said during the postgame press conference. “Get the ball to bounce off about six different players, go out of bounds, get thrown back in just where you need it, and then free one of your fellas up at midfield and get him the ball? There’s no blade of grass with enough magic to draw up a play like that.”

In an odd footnote to the game, the start of the second half was delayed slightly, when a nearby treeman—long thought extinct in the Duqueswood region—streaked (very slowly) onto the field at halftime to dance in celebration of the Green Duke’s impressive first half. Neither the referee nor campus security could wrestle the giant naked oak-humanoid-hybrid to the ground. And finally only a Duqeswood student in attendance, Zephira Gettleaf ’26, who is fluent in the language of trees, was able to coax him off the pitch.

“He told me the team’s performance the last few weeks has awakened some of the ancient treefolk of the Duqueswood forest,” said Gettleaf, a double major in Oakish and arbor & gender studies. “I’m not a big fan of this sport they’re playing out here, but this could be a huge research opportunity for me. I was applying to study abroad next semester in the Loren forest, but now I might be able to save some gold and deepen my knowledge of Oakish right here.”

Up 2-0 in the second half, Duqueswood looked to have the game well in hand, but as they soon learned, having a game well in hand against a band of raving orcs can be hazardous to one’s health. Though Central Michigan did mount a deep drive in the second half, many of the orcs seemed more interested in hunting, maiming, and expertly setting up chain blocks to surf carelessly positioned elves off the pitch.

When Spinleaf ended the scoring threat with a spinning elbow to Dan Bazuin’s throat just a few yards from the goal line, the sophomore orc blitzer lost the ball, but also seemed to lose any interest in the ball, as did the rest of the Central Michigan squad. Spinleaf quickly picked up the ball and raced toward the end-zone, but the orcs barely pursued, instead going full Waaagh on the inexperienced wood elves still on the pitch, who were facing an orc team for the first time.

By the time the bashing, face-stomping, eye-gouging, gut-punching and arm-wrenching was finished, the physically dominant Central Michigan squad brought their injury and KO totals for the game to an impressive 8 on 38 successful blocks, and Spinleaf was the only player left on the field. Though he was standing in the endzone, he couldn’t help but reflect pensively rather than immediately celebrate.

“Looking back over the bloody pitch and seeing my fallen teammates carried off, moaning in agony, screaming in pain, I could only think back on the Eastern Waste wars we’re studying in my Ancient Elven Military Lore 205 class,” he said after the game. “I though of the songs of the high elven widows, crying their tragic laments over fallen brothers and husbands to the empty night sky before being ravaged and murdered themselves by the orc warbands of old. I felt as if I could weep to think that this primal enmity between our races will never end. But then I looked at the scoreboard, and I was like, second straight win, baby! Let’s go Green Dukes!”

With two injured players missing the next game and one suffering a dislocated shoulder, Smithson was not quite as celebratory as Spinleaf. “A win’s a win, but we definitely need to get more physical out there or we won’t have much of a team left by midseason,” he said. “We need more size, more bulk. Hey, that tree guy thing I heard about … that oak fella who was streaking on the field at half time with his nuts and berries hanging out. Any chance we could get him to enroll and find a uniform big enough to cover all that bark?”
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