On May 18, 2025 it was officially announced that Mr. Joe Barcellos, the Los Banos High School’s long term athletic director was retiring. After fifteen years as athletic director, Barcellos definitely made an impact on the high school’s athletic program.
Being an athletic director isn’t for all and having a background in sports makes a huge difference. Barcellos has quite the background. He reflected that he, “… started here coaching JV football and JV basketball, then went to the varsity level for basketball and coached up there for about thirteen years. After that was done, I coached JV softball for a year…then cross country for seven years.”
Before becoming an athletic director, Barcellos was a teacher, this year marking his thirty-fifth year in education. He didn’t become a full time athletic director until 2024 as for his first thirteen years, he taught three periods a day alongside this role.
He started out teaching a class called Freshman Issues, then moved onto World History, and the last part of his teaching was Government and Economics. Not only did he teach those, but he also taught as an ASB director, Career and Education for ROP, and a Sports Marketing class for about four years.
One of the reasons Barcellos wanted to become an athletic director was to have an impact on all sports, not just the one he was coaching. He wanted to help all programs get better and raise money to do different things. One of his favorite memories was seeing the 2019 boys baseball team win the DIV state championship as the team went on a great run.
Barcellos said, “Anytime you can see your student athletes succeed and stay in touch after they’ve graduated and seeing the impact that you had as a coach and teacher makes it worthwhile. Getting the new weight room once I started out was one of my big goals, as well as getting the Loftin Stadium renovated.”
Though there are many benefits to being an athletic director, it does come at a cost. Every day is a new day and you’re never really on vacation. According to Barcellos, even when you think you have some rest, if you don’t answer certain phone calls you’ll have some trouble later on. It is a twenty-four hour, three-hundred-sixty-five day job and you have to be able to respond to emails in a timely fashion or you’ll lose them.
Every day you’re putting down small fires or big fires. Even though the problems are mostly with coaches, players, or other teams, it’s still a big responsibility. Barcellos leaves us with this, “It’s been a great ride and a lot of fun. I bleed cardinal and gold; I always will. I spent almost 40 years including my high school years on this campus and it’s always going to be a part of me.”
After retiring, Barcellos plans to learn a second language, that being Spanish and to use that new skill for different places around the world. He also would like to help his parents out a lot more and involve himself in more of their activities.
We all wish Barcellos the best and are thankful for all that he has done for the school. His efforts to make the campus and athletics better than before will never be forgotten.
