Cumberland County High School (CCHS) will be experiencing a key changing of the guard this summer at the athletic director (AD) position as Alfonso Bell steps down from the role and Joseph Nowak steps into it.

Bell has been serving as both athletic director and Cumberland County Public Schools transportation coordinator, and he will continue serving in the latter position.

“I’m just tired,” Bell said. “It’s hard doing transportation, athletics and field maintenance and stuff like that. … But it’s just time.”

CCHS Principal Eugene Williams Jr. said mostly outside candidates were interviewed, but he explained why the 24-year-old Nowak was ultimately chosen for the job.

“First of all, he’s a teacher who has already formed some really solid relationships with his students over on the middle school side,” Williams said. “He’s a conscientious young man. He’s served as our AD for a while this year, and he’s also stepped in and coached some teams for us when we had to make some coaching personnel changes on different teams. So he’s got background coaching this year both wrestling and softball, and so we just thought that a young man who has dedicated himself at such a young age to the students of Cumberland, has the passion that he has, and he loves to work with others and get great things out of our young people, we just thought he’d be the best choice for this position.”

The principal noted that the decision, which was made in April, will be effective July 1.

Nowak said he was really excited to receive the opportunity.

“Getting this opportunity at my age is not really heard of very often, so I was really excited to getting it, and I look forward to dealing with all of the sports programs that we have in Cumberland and looking forward to the next school year,” he said.

He confirmed that serving as an athletic director is something he has been interested in doing.

“I decided I wanted to go into the education field around my junior year in high school, and one of the big influences of that was actually my high school athletic director up at Centreville High School, and he kind of helped me get kind of prepared to go into the education field at the high school level,” Nowak said. “And then all of my coaches throughout my sporting career in high school and all that, they’ve been very supportive.”

“Once I started my education at Longwood, I kind of was split on which path I wanted to take, whether I wanted to go down the administration path and become more of like a principal or an assistant principal or spend the majority of my time teaching and coaching,” he continued. “And I think this position as the athletic director kind of combines those two, so I think I’ve found, hopefully, that happy medium that I was looking for …”

He noted having earned a bachelor’s degree in liberal studies, elementary and middle school education, with a history minor.

He also cited experience that will help him fulfill his duties as AD.

“Really my coaching experience starts when I was back at Longwood,” he said. “My last two years at Longwood, I was actually an assistant coach for our club football team there that I served on and played for, for three years, before that.”

“And then since coming to Cumberland, I was a coach for football this past year,” he continued. “During the winter season, I was the assistant wrestling coach, but I also served as Alfonso Bell’s assistant athletic director during the winter season as well, so I did pick up a lot from him there.”

Nowak pointed out that Bell has been instrumental in preparing him to take on an AD role.

“Really since that fall season, Coach Bell really kind of saw something in me and he kind of started taking me under his wing, knowing that he was leaving and he kind of needed to find someone to hopefully replace him that could do a good job, and I think he saw that in me,” Nowak said. “So he kind of showed me a lot of the ropes. Even before the position was officially opened and I applied and even showed a lot of interest in it, he still wanted to kind of show me some of the ropes, and I think that really helped.”

“And then in the spring season, I coached softball both at the middle school and the high school level for Cumberland, and again, I didn’t serve officially as an assistant athletic director, but I did have a lot of game duties and stuff thrown on me during the spring season as well due to scheduling conflicts and stuff like that,” he continued. “So I think all of that kind of combined gives me a little bit, not everything that I need to know exactly, but it gave me a good foundation of experience to get started at least. And like I said, I look forward to growing and gaining more experience throughout the years.”

Nowak expressed a clear vision for what he wants to accomplish with Cumberland’s athletic programs.

“As a whole, I know we struggle in some sports, but we do succeed in a lot of the others,” he said. “So I kind of just want to pick some of those struggling sports that we struggle with like football, softball and kind of lift those up to where we are currently with baseball and volleyball and both of our basketball teams. And once we get everyone on the same level, that’s where hopefully we can pick everything up and start competing at the state level …”

Nowak is hoping to be the catalyst for this change.

“I think that my younger, newer mentality hopefully will spark a little bit more interest from both the kids and coaches, and we’re just going to lift this program up, and hopefully in the next couple years, you’ll be seeing Cumberland competing at the state level rather than just at the regional level in a lot of the sports,” he said.

Reflecting on Bell’s service to the school system, Williams said, “When I think about the yeoman’s task of having to be the athletic director and the transportation director, it’s just a lot to ask, and to have those two positions and for him to do it as well as he has done it for as long as he has done it just speaks volumes for the type of human being and the type of character that he has.”