BOSC approves joint Central/West girls soccer team for two years

MANCHESTER, N.H. –  Just four years after winning a state championship, Manchester Central will no longer have its own girls’ soccer team.

On Monday night, the Manchester Board of School Committee approved a proposal that would merge Central’s team with the team at Manchester West for the next two years, due primarily to decreased participation among students at both schools.

During the 2022 season, Central went 1-15 in NHIAA Division I play and West has won just one game in the past six years. Neither team has made any cuts to their team in the past six years.

The move follows other sports team mergers among Manchester public high schools in baseball and hockey.

Manchester School District Athletic Director Christine Telge said that part of the decline in girls’ soccer enrollment comes from the decline of nearby towns, such as Hooksett, sending their students to Manchester schools. Telge also said that part of the decline comes from the lack of feeder programs developing student athletes at middle schools and elementary schools in the city as well as non-school soccer programs available for high school-aged girls that competes for time commitments.

It has yet to be determined whether the new cooperative team will practice at Padden Field (Central’s site) or the George W. Smith Complex (West’s site), although Telge said she would investigate potentially alternating between the two sites and also possibly alternating home games between the teams’ two current home fields: William Bill Meisel Veterans’ Memorial Field (West) and Gill Stadium (Central).

Telge is also hopeful that there will be enough players for a joint-junior varsity team as well and that the unification will only last for two years.

She added that there will be a boys team and girls team at each middle school playing next season.