Mike Cupper is the new coach of Cheltenham Hockey Club’s men’s flagship team this season and although he has just taken on the role he has plenty of coaching experience.

He has coached the club’s ladies’ 2^nd XI for the past couple of years – they won the West Women’s Division 2 West title last season – and he’s also coached a lot of cricket, his other great sporting love.

He’s actually been a cricket coach for a lot longer than he’s been coaching hockey because he first started coaching at Hatherley and Reddings at the age of just 16.

He still coaches at Hatherley today and he said: “The two sports overlap perfectly!”

He coaches the girls and women at Hatherley, which is an ever growing part of the club, and he’s certainly looking to make an impact in his new hockey role.

Cheltenham are playing in West Premier One in 2024/25 after last season’s relegation from the national league and Cupper is targeting a quick return.

“We want to win promotion, we’ve got to go for it,” he said. “But if we return to the national league we want to stay up for longer.”

Cupper, a geography teacher at Pate’s Grammar School, is, as you’d expect, very well spoken, and while promotion is the target he knows that it will take a lot of hard work to achieve their goal.

So what is his coaching philosophy?

“Simplicity,” he said. “I want us to do the simple things well, I want us to be really fit.

“I want to build players’ confidence and get them to believe in themselves. I want to make them better and I want them to enjoy what they’re doing.”

The flagship team have a new captain in Morgan Powell-Jones this season and it was Powell-Jones who approached Cupper to take on the new role.

And after the ladies’ 2^nd XI’s unbeaten campaign last time out, it’s easy to see why Cupper was in demand.

“Last season was amazing,” said Cupper.

And their title success was all the more amazing because the previous season they had been relegated.

“That wasn’t a great start,” admitted Cupper. “They’d been struggling for a few seasons; they were a new group of players and so it was about changing the mentality and creating a team.

“Last season we built on what we’d started the previous season, it was really, really good.”

Indeed it was and Cupper is looking forward to working closely with Powell-Jones, a midfielder or attacker, in the new campaign.

“He’ll lead from the front, he’ll put lots of energy into it,” said Cupper. “He ran the Cheltenham Half Marathon at the start of September and then played a game for us that afternoon in a pre-season triangular tournament!”

That’s some commitment and Cupper has certainly proved his commitment over the years.

The former Pate’s Grammar School pupil started playing hockey at the age of 15 or 16 and after returning from university in Exeter played for Lansdown 1sts for several years before joining Cheltenham some eight years ago.

He describes himself as a utility player and was a regular for Cheltenham 2nds for a number of seasons.

His increased coaching duties mean his opportunities to play are more limited now but he still enjoys a run-out when he can.

And he certainly enjoys a run-out in the cricket season – providing he’s not batting! – because he’s a regular in Hatherley’s 2^nd XI and a former first-team player.

“I’m an all-rounder, I bowl a little bit of seam,” he said modestly.

He’s been  coaching the girls and women’s section at the club for the past four or five years, a role he enjoys.

“It was a conscious decision I made, I wanted the girls and women to have the same opportunities to play cricket that I had,” he said. “In the past they didn’t have those opportunities.”

It’s certainly working because Cupper’s wife Holly is one of many who have taken up the sport in recent times.

And it’s worked both ways because it was the cricket girls who helped him get his first coaching job with the ladies’ 2nds at Cheltenham Hockey Club.

“Quite a few of them play cricket and hockey and when the hockey job became available they said to me, ‘You’re quite a good coach, will you come and coach our hockey?’”

As Cupper says, the two sports overlap perfectly!