Mountain State derby
The Mountain State derby is the name given to the men's soccer games between the Marshall Thundering Herd and the West Virginia Mountaineers, the only NCAA Division I programs in the state of West Virginia.
2023 Mountain State derby at Dick Dlesk Soccer Stadium. | |
| Sport | Soccer |
|---|---|
| First meeting | October 26, 1983 WVU 2 - Marshall 0 |
| Latest meeting | November 12, 2023 No. 1 Marshall 3 - No. 5 WVU 2 |
| Next meeting | TBD |
| Statistics | |
| Meetings total | 26 |
| All-time series | WVU leads, 17–8–2 (.667) |
| Largest victory | WVU, 5–0 (1987) |
| Longest win streak | WVU, 7 (1986–1992) |
| Current win streak | Marshall, 1 (2023–present) |
In 2019, the teams met in the second round of the 2019 NCAA Division I Men's Soccer Tournament as 11th seed Marshall defeated WVU, 2-1, in front of a then-record crowd of 2,126 fans at the Veterans Memorial Soccer Complex. The 2021 edition of the Mountain State Derby set a then-record for highest-attended soccer game ever in West Virginia with 3,033 in the crowd. In the 2022 matchup, #4 Marshall defeated unranked West Virginia 1-0 before a crowd of 2,735 in Huntington.
In 2022, both schools joined the Sun Belt Conference, Marshall as a full member and West Virginia as a men's soccer member, and the rivalry became an annual conference game.
The 2023 regular season edition of the Mountain State Derby set a new record for the largest crowd to ever watch a soccer game in the state of West Virginia at that time with 3,147 people in attendance. The record was reset less than a month later in the Sun Belt Championship in Huntington with 3,151 in attendance.