Staff photo by TOM KING Bishop Guertin athletic director Pete Paladino will be stepping away from that job to take another job at the school dealing with alumni relations.

NASHUA – Bishop Guertin High School will soon begin the search for a new athletic director.

Cardinals current AD Pete Paladino told The Telegraph he is transitioning soon away from the athletic director’s job into a position that has been vacant at the school the last few years, dealing with alumni development and relations.

“This could be a positive thing for me to help the school in a different way,” said Paladino, who graduated from BG in 1981 and who has been the school’s athletic director since the summer of 2012. “The game has changed a little bit and I’ve done it for some 32 years.”

Thus, if the school has a fall sports season beginning in late August, there will be a new person running the athletic department.

Bishop Guertin principal Jason Strniste said the school will likely organize a search committee and hopes to have a new AD by the first half of the summer.

Paladino was the assistant athletic director at Merrimack College for seven of his nine years at the school, and then embarked on a 15-year stint as the AD at Lawrence (Mass.) Central Catholic. He originally stepped away from that job in the spring of 2012 to pursue interests outside of athletics, but when the Guertin job soon opened up as then-AD Tony Johnson was leaving for Worcester Academy, Paladino couldn’t resist working for the school he graduated from n 1981.

“He really bleeds Green and Gold,” said Strniste, who will head up the search for Paladino’s successor. “He’s always been all for enhancing the athletic experience for our students in the tradition of BG.

“He really wants the kids to be in the spotlight for all the hard work they put in. He’s done a great job collaborating with the state and the schools in the area. He’s willing to get in the trenches to do all the little things that need to get done.”

Paladino said the school approached him about eventually filling the vacant alumni position earlier this year, and at first he was hesitant. And at first it was talked about something he’d do with his AD job.

“They said ‘We think you have the personality and would do well in the alumni area,'” said Paladino. “I said ‘Yeah, I’d like to do that.’ But a lot of times I’d have a game when they’d schedule things. It didn’t quite mesh well together. I couldn’t do both and do both well.”

Paladino said he then thought about how the hours for the AD job just kept adding up and he felt this new job would give him more time with his family.

Meanwhile, he’ll be on hand to help or be part of a search committee that will be established to hire a successor. Sources say current assistant AD Steve Duprat, who held that same position under Johnson and is a BG alum, is interested in the job.

“We don’t have any one candidate in mind at this point,” Strniste said, adding he’d like to get someone in place by early summer if possible. “We think our long standing tradition will involve alumni, a friend of the school, or people who want to work at a Catholic high school.

“I’m confident we’ll have a strong pool of candidates. It may end up being someone who’s in the building now or somebody who is near to Bishop Guertin.”

“The bottom line is I want to serve and help the whole community,” Paladino said. “I think there’s a lot of people capable of being the AD and doing it well. It’s (the BG athletics program) in a good place right now.”

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