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.[1]
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.[2] 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.[3]
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.[4]
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.