In March, Paul Ostberg decided it was time to move on. He was the boys soccer coach at Memorial High School in Manchester for 11 years, loved coaching soccer, but needed a new challenge.

Ostberg was hoping to hook on with a college program, but the opportunities were extremely limited. Then an advertisement on a web site in late July caught his interest.

So he applied for and landed the position of boys soccer coach at Bishop Guertin High School.

“This is a good place to be at,” Ostberg said. “I’ve got my USF ‘A’ license and I’m certainly qualified to coach at those higher levels, but it’s difficult to find a position that will suit both myself and my family.

“I was planning to take the fall off, but I didn’t expect this position to open up and I’ve always regarded Bishop Guertin athletics and the school itself at a very high level.”

Ostberg lives in Hudson and has been involved at the youth level in the area with the Nashua World Cup club for a number of years. He remembers when Bishop Guertin soccer, under former coach Tony Bellinger, was a perennial power.

He also knows they have taken a step back in recent years. The Cardinals last final appearance came in 2004, when it beat Exeter in the finals. Bellinger retired two years ago and his replacement, Patrick Mulcahy, elected to move to the girls’ varsity job when it opened this summer.

“I don’t know why soccer has dropped off at BG,” Ostberg said, “especially when you look at how well they’ve done in other sports. The amount of banners the school has is tremendous.”

Interest is certainly waning. There are just 46 boys out for soccer, down significantly from the turnout of just a few years ago. But Ostberg said soccer numbers are down at many schools, with the exception of the programs that are consistently at or near the top – Pinkerton Academy of Derry, Manchester Central, Exeter, Londonderry and Concord.

The competition doesn’t get any easier this year with the inclusion of two very strong programs to Division I, Hanover and Bedford. Bedford won the Division I title last fall. Hanover won the previous six.

The Cardinals actually finished under .500 last year at 7-9 and lost 12 seniors to graduation.

Two of their top returning players, Noah and Chris Arling, are still at the school but have chosen to bypass high school soccer and play for the academy team at Seacoast United.

The advent of outside programs competing for top high school players has been going on for years in sports like ice hockey. This is the first year it will directly impact high school soccer.

But Ostberg believes if you run the right program, coupled with the school’s academic reputation, it will attract talented players from throughout the region, like BG has in other sports.

“We hope to restore the program to prominence,” said Ostberg, who was an All-American at Babson College and played professionally with the Connecticut Wolves in the late 1990s. “We’re going to be young and inexperienced this year.”