In a thrilling rivalry game the Oregon Ducks outlasted the Oregon State Beavers 21-19 in the first Civil War between the two clubs in nearly two years. Oregon was Carried by Lock Marcus Berns (‘23) who scored two tries and earned his first man of the match award.

Oregon was sloppy to start the game and struggled to keep possession of the ball. The Beavers capitalized on the Duck’s mistakes and took an early 7-0 lead. After a key goal line stand by Oregon resulting in a goal line drop out. Oregon State mishandled it and Tate Nelson (‘25) scooped up the loose ball and made a line break. Nelson eventually offloaded the ball to Berns who burned everyone and took it 70 meters to score the try. 

Oregon was unable to build momentum from this try and surrendered another try to Oregon State before halftime and went into the break trailing 14-7. Early in the second half the ducks found their rhythm and started to control the game a little more. In the 55th minute Berns struck again, this time making a clean line break and scoring from 40 yards out. Logan Deitner (‘22) hit the difficult corner conversion to tie the game at 14. 

The game was relatively slow for the next 20 minutes until Oregon was able to secure a lineout deep inside Oregon State territory. This set the Ducks up for a perfect opportunity to score the game sealing try. Off of the line out Wes Walters (‘23) caught the ball from scrum-half Ion Goulthorpe (‘23) and ran over an Oregon State defender on his way into the try zone. 

The win was not sealed from there as Oregon State was able to score off of a lineout of their own but the conversion was no good as time expired sealing the victory for the Ducks. Oregon hopes to build on the momentum of this win against Western Washington. The Ducks are hungry for redemption and are even hungrier to repeat as NCRC champions and the only way to achieve that is beating Western Washington at The Front.