MISSOULA — Stuart Gore, who grew up playing on English national teams, who won an NAIA national championship at Northwestern Ohio in 2016 in his first college coaching job and who has spent the last five years as an NCAA Division I head coach, has been named the new leader of the Montana soccer program.
“I’m thrilled he accepted the job and am completely confident in what he can do at the University of Montana,” said director of athletics Kent Haslam. “He was enthusiastic about the job and really wanted it.”
After starting the program at Northwestern Ohio from nothing, Gore led the Racers to a five-year record of 100-15-6, with the team advancing to the NAIA national semifinals each of his final four years, with a national championship in 2016 and national runner-up finish in 2014.
He spent two seasons on staff at James Madison, in 2018 and ’19, coached under Chris Logan at North Dakota for one year, then was hired by Northwestern State, where he led the Lady Demons to the NCAA tournament in his first season. He had a two-year record at the school of 25-10-4.
He was the head coach at Troy the last three seasons.
“What impressed me was certainly his knowledge of soccer and ability to coach but also his breadth of experience,” added Haslam.
“He played for the national team in England, played professionally, started a program at the NAIA level and turned it into a national powerhouse. He was an assistant at two very good Division I institutions, then the head coach at two other Division I institutions.
“Typically, we’re hiring people in their first head coaching job. That’s not the case with him.”
Gore was on campus last week to interview, was later offered and accepted. He’ll be in Missoula and on the job later this week.
“Montana is a place where people care deeply about development, about winning, about doing things the right way, the Montana way,” said Gore. “It’s exactly the environment I’m used to and wanted to be a part of it.”
Gore grew up in Dunstable, an hour north of London, soccer the national and family sport, his mom serving as the local club’s president. He left school at the age of 16 to begin his professional career. “I went into a man’s world and grew thick skin really quick.”
Later, a trip to London with his sister for a college job fair led to him to a booth that advertised “Play Soccer in America.”
That set everything in motion, the scholarship to play at NCAA Division II University of Montevallo in Alabama, another professional opportunity in Spain, then a return to the U.S. for various coaching jobs in the Northeast, the last as head coach of the Philadelphia Fever in the WPSL Elite.
He was hired by Northwestern Ohio in the fall of 2012 to build a program that would begin playing in 2013.
“The fact it’s a full-time job in something I love to do and it’s taken very seriously,” Gore said when asked about why he wanted to get into the college game. “I remember sitting at my desk when I got the job. I’d never recruited a player, had no recruiting ties. I thought, I’ll just outwork everybody.”
And so, he did. His first team went 15-5-1. The next four years the Racers went 85-10-5, making the national championship match in 2014 in his second year at the school, winning it all in 2016, 1-0 over top-seeded Spring Arbor of Michigan.
“My mom is 83 and she’ll watch every one of our games at Montana. She is by far my biggest critic,” said Gore. “We won a national championship and the first thing she said, instead of congratulations, was, you should have made it two-nil. That sums up my mom.”
After returning to the NAIA semifinals in 2017, Gore was a finalist for the open job at James Madison. JMU went with UCLA associate head coach Joshua Walters, who asked Gore to be his associate head coach, which Gore did for the 2018 and ’19 seasons, when the Dukes won 20 matches.
He joined fellow Englishman and recruiting-trail friend Chris Logan at North Dakota for the COVID-impacted spring season of 2021 before Northwestern State reached out.
He took over a successful program that had won 33 matches the previous three seasons but hadn’t been to the NCAA tournament since 2005. In his first season, in 2021, the Lady Demons won a pair of 1-0 matches in the Southland Conference tournament and made the NCAAs.
“I didn’t know where Natchitoches was. I didn’t even know how to say it. It was an amazing group of players who were desperate to win,” Gore said. “They knew how to win, they just had never gotten across the line.”
His second season at the school led to a 12-4-3 finish, which had Troy calling to fill its open head coaching position.
It was going to be an uphill battle, an under-resourced program competing in the fifth-best league for women’s soccer in the nation, behind the four power conferences.
At the end of last season, the top five Sun Belt teams had an RPI of 62 or better. One of the league’s bottom-half teams, Georgia Southern, traveled to Missoula in 2023 and claimed a 1-0 victory over the Grizzlies, only of only three home losses for Montana over the last three years.
Tough league, especially when competing in the sport isn’t a department’s priority. “That wasn’t my culture,” said Gore, who stepped down from his position at Troy after the 2025 season, after three years of trying. “I thought everybody wants to win and not everybody wants to win.”
That had Gore on the market the last few months, carefully eyeing vacancies. “There were a lot of jobs open. I only applied for jobs that fit me in terms of the winning culture. I wasn’t going to chase conference logos. I don’t think that will fulfill you.”
“The relevance of this department and the soccer program and what it means to this community, that was exciting for him,” said Haslam. “It meant a lot to me that he recognized that. I was impressed with his energy and his enthusiasm about this place and what it meant to him personally.
“All of that plus the experiences he’s had made him a great candidate. I’m excited to get him here and get going. It will bring some stability to the program and let the country know that we have a head coach leading our program and that we’re off and running.”
Gore will be only the fifth coach in program history, with three of the first four winning multiple Big Sky championships and going to the NCAA tournament. It’s been the expectation since Betsy Duerksen started the program in the mid-90s.
Under former coach Chris Citowicki, Montana won regular-season championships in 2019 and the spring of ’21, then the last three, going 18-1-5 in league in 2023, ’24 and ’25. Citowicki capped his tenure with a trip to the NCAA tournament in November before stepping down in December.
“I’m not scared. We wear the crown. We have to own it,” said Gore, whose job over the coming months will be to re-build a roster that this spring has 13.
“It’s great what Chris and his team achieved. It’s much easier to recruit to a place that has had a lot of success than a team where you’re trying to sell a vision of something that has never been done before.
“I’m jumping out of my skin to work with this team and feed off their hunger. I’m not about taking part. I want to take over and Montana is a place where you can take over. It’s a special place with a lot of history. My job is to carry on the history and carry on the dynasty.”
