The Marshall Mob is a spirited group of volunteers who travel to sports games to promote school pride. However, while they bring passion to football, baseball and basketball games, their presence is often missed at regular season games for teams such as field hockey, lacrosse and soccer.
According to junior varsity field hockey player Kristen Ellis, it is hard to get people excited for her team’s success when no one comes to the games.
“The Marshall Mob doesn’t come to our games, and not that many people attend,” Ellis said.
Away games tend to have a smaller turnout, and senior and diver Elizabeth Gardner believes it has something to do with mainstream popularity.
“If the sport isn’t played at Marshall then it doesn’t see nearly as many mob members, like swimming, track, cross country and away games,” Gardner said. “The sports that are big deals in regular pop culture usually see a good mob turnout and then the less popular sports don’t. I think this is a result of cultural values.”
Gymnastics, which competed eight times this year, had very few fans attend their competitions.
“There isn’t a lot of people that come, really only people’s friends come,” sophomore and gymnast Caitlyn Peters said.
Aside from needing enough space and good seating for the crowd, senior Morgan Booth also brought up the issue of cheers as a reason why the mob is only able to attend certain sports.
“Basketball and football have developed the most cheers,” Booth said. “The lack of ability to cheer for teams is probably the reason for a low turn out to other teams.”
Junior and girls varsity basketball captain Olivia Barrand thinks that a program improvement could draw a larger crowd.
“There’s no Marshall Mob at our games most of the time, but this year we are really working on building up the program,” Barrand said. “I think once they see that we are improving and playing hard, then they are going to start coming to our games.”
The mob plans on expanding its reach in the future through a network of student athletes.
“[The plan is to] raise awareness about all the awesome athletes Marshall has and big games going on,” Gardner said. “If people hear about someone on a team that’s crushing it, then the mob will want to roll to see it, cheer them on and cheer Marshall on.”