Former Bearcat now D-I official
SUBMITTED PHOTO
Former Northwest Missouri State football player Dan Nowakowski officiates an NAIA national basketball tournament game in Kansas City during the 2015 season.
Dan Nowakowski has always had a competitive drive.
The former Northwest Missouri State football player, who suited up from 1980-84 and played for Jim Redd and Vern Thompson, is now a Division I basketball official.
Though they are quite different aspects, he said they do share one common trait.
“They are two completely different things,” he said. “But the competitive drive is still there. You want to be in the right position to make the correct call every time. It’s all a part of being very competitive.”
Like most officials who come out of the northwest Missouri region, Nowakowski got his start in Bob Lade’s officiating class at Northwest. Lade was an assistant on the football staff under Redd and is now the head of officials for the NAIA.
Upon graduating from Northwest, he took a teaching job at Wyandotte High School in Kansas City, Kansas. While teaching architecture and design, he coached football for 10 seasons and basketball for another three.
While coaching basketball however, his mind and his eyes started to wander.
“I started watching the refs more so than watching my own players, and I really developed a passion for it,” Nowakowski said. “I knew I wanted to move over to the reffing side of things.”
After three years of coaching basketball, he moved into high school officiating and later the NAIA in the Heart of America Athletic Conference. He quickly moved into Division II basketball officiating and got assigned to the Mid-America Intercollegiate Athletic Association, though due to his affiliation with Northwest, he was largely kept out of Bearcat games.
Nowakowski officiated his first Division I game in the fall of 2000 in what is now the Summit League.
His assignments now consist of NAIA, Division II and Division I games. Redd has kept in contact with Nowakowski over the years and has always remembered him for going about things the right way.
“He was a dangerous running back and defensive back coming out of high school in Clarinda (Iowa),” Redd said. “He was dangerous in the kick and punt return game. We recruited him as a defensive back. Dan was always a great student of the game and he played every play like it was his last.”
Before Nowakowski’s playing days were done, he had helped the Bearcat football program reach its first postseason contest (coming under Vern Thompson) in 1984. The Bearcats lost to Nebraska-Omaha in the first round of the playoffs, but it was clear a stone had been turned.
Nowakowski gets a sense of pride whenever he sees the Bearcat football program doing well.
“It feels good because you feel that connection because that team is part of who you are,” he said. “You always feel that Northwest football feeling. I knew, even back then, that if the right leadership came along, that it had the potential to be something special in the future.”
Redd and Nowakowski continued to run into each other. Redd spent some time as Athletic Director at William Jewell College in Liberty, an institution that Nowakowski often officiated.
“I would see Dan a lot,” Redd said. “He was well respected in the reffing community nationally. He did the NAIA Division II and Division I tournaments as he worked his way up the ladder. He always presented himself in a professional manner and his mechanics as a referee were awesome. You can’t sit around and wait for long debating calls.”
After Nowakowski’s 10 years at Wyandotte, he spent another 22 years teaching architecture and design at Sumner Academy of Arts and Science, which is a magnet school in Kansas City. Kansas.
He retired just this past school year and is planning on staying in the architecture field going forward.
