For out award-winning high school soccer coach, ‘philosophy is based on love’
Out twenty-something soccer coach has a small New Hampshire high school dreaming big. He's always looking for what he calls 'light-bulb moments.'
Mark
Ask many winning coaches what their secret to success is and they may point to strategy, tactics, cohesion or the cliche default, “the players.”
For Couper Gunn, the 26-year-old head coach for boy’s soccer at Kearsarge (N.H.) Regional High School, the foundation of his coaching philosophy is based on something that seems softer but hits harder and drivers deeper.
“That philosophy is based on love,” he said. “I like to think that, even in and especially in the hard moments like me calling them out for something that needs to better. They know that it’s coming from a place of love and, more importantly, that I love them.”
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Gunn, an Outsports Soccer Power 26 honoree, took over as coach of the Cougars soccer team in 2022 immediately after complete his college soccer career at NCAA Division III Colby-Sawyer College. He was known for being a tough, well-prepared defensive player and built a team in that image that grew from three straight losses in state playoff quarterfinals to their first bid in the state championship since 1993.
The Cougars fell short in that title game, but a 15-1-4 season didn’t go unnoticed as Gunn was named New Hampshire Interscholastic Athletic Assn. Boys Division III Soccer Coach of the Year. It was a culmination of a process that saw a group of players who were part of Gunn’s first team as freshmen develop into forces as seniors.
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“It’s teaching and that’s why I love teaching,” Gunn said. “It’s one thing when they start to do it in training and like I’ll see the light bulb on in training and then it’s another to see it in a game.
“It’s amazing for them to be able to do it, especially if it’s something that they felt like they couldn’t do. “You want those light-bulb moments, and you don’t get those light-bulb moments if kids don’t believe in themselves. That’s the best thing, is believing in the kids so that they can believe in themselves.”
Gunn’s light-bulb moment
A piece of this success began in the years where Gunn was much like the young student-athletes he now coaches. At Colby-Sawyer, Gunn was known for leading the team in minutes played and making all of them count while protecting the Chargers’ net.
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The summer led to a breakthrough sophomore season in 2019 and led to Gunn’s “light-bulb moment” —It was his coming out as gay story that he told to Outsports in 2021.
He wrote of a first simple but visible act of coming out, wearing a Pride shirt as a counselor at a summer camp.
“I’m a tall guy in any room but especially so in a dining room of 300 middle- and high-school-aged kids,” Gunn wrote. “I felt like 600 eyes were on me. But I realized something in that moment. The fear that I had felt at the beginning of the walk was gone. I was a beacon, not a target. What I felt in that moment can only be described as Pride with a capital P. Pride in myself for finally being true to myself.
“It wasn’t that I needed that validation from others telling me that they accepted me or were proud of me. Rather, it was the act of finally screaming to the world my full, unapologetic truth that set me free. I felt like I was 10 times the player because I had finally come to terms with who I was.”
Looking back, Gunn said that moment helped define his future, but also plays into what rooted him to take this space as a teacher and coach in rural New Hampshire.
“All my friends are telling me I should move to move to a city,” he said. “There was a stretch of a couple years where I was in a really bad, really bad place and thought that it was time to move on. I can only imagine horror at the prospect of having moved and having missed out the life that I am living now.
“I’m incredibly glad that I am here and still here because I think I’ve grown a lot in terms of my ability to know what I’m worth in all things. I think that’s the biggest thing that I look back at from when I was 19 is a kid who was trying his best but really didn’t know what he was worth.”
That discovery built a player and a coach. Last season, the lessons learned also helped Gunn and his team build their best season in three decades.
“Every day that I got to step on the field as a player and then continue to do that as a coach as myself is
Is is a win,” he said. “I have earned this and I have a right to to be here. I think that’s what I talked to my kids about kind of in the run up to the final was that I wanted to see a team that knew that they deserved to be there.”
The New Hampshire Division III semifinal between Kearsarge and defending state champ Hopkinton is where the lessons came together.
In the second half, the Cougars were down 1-0. Gunn’s group tightened up on defense and created an opportunity. They turned a misplay into a breakaway that became the tying goal.
Two minutes later, a set piece became a goal and a 2-1 lead that Kearsarge held onto.
In 2026, Gunn wants the next step, and sees it in reach.
“I’ve thought of it every single day since then since losing in the final,” he said.
“It’s incredibly rewarding now to be in a place, both with coaching and with teaching, that I feel completely normal loving and caring as much as I do. Because it’s what my kids need and what they deserve.”
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