By Jacob Williams
There is more than what meets the eye with the two new custodians who were hired this year. Robert Barker, better known as Rob, is not an exception to this.
It all started at a match in Winchester. Barker was officiating a volleyball match when he looked and saw a man wearing a Delta jacket amongst the Hagerstown section.
Chris Pyle, the director of maintenance for Delaware Community Schools, was watching his daughter. Barker went over for some small talk and said “There’s an eagle amongst a pack of tigers.” This led to them talking about Delta and Barker later went and talked about his work background.
“I’ve got a background in HVAC, maintenance work. I was working for the city of Muncie Parks and Recreation,” Barker said.
Pyle then told him that they were thinking about creating a position which is part custodial and part groundskeeping. Barker later filled out the application to see if it would work and ended up getting hired for the position.
He has been an IHSAA sports official for 24 years.
He officiates three sports: basketball, fast-pitch softball, and volleyball, but his favorite is basketball. Basketball has been his favorite for quite some time as he played varsity at Muncie Central and during his senior year advanced to the final game of semi-state.
“The biggest highlight for our school and me was my senior year. We won sectional, we won the regional, and we got to the final game of the semi-state and got beat by Cathedral,” Barker said. “If we had won that game we would have gone to the state tournament.”
All that happened before class basketball was ever a thing.
“We were among the final eight teams still playing basketball in the state of Indiana. That was a prideful moment for me and my teammates,” he said.
Afterward he went to Morehead State University, which was a great moment for him.
“I ended up going to Morehead on a scholarship which was a prime moment because first to get a basketball scholarship,” Barker said, “and secondly to get into an NCAA Division 1 college. That was always a goal of mine to play Division 1 college basketball.”
His best memory was during his freshman and sophomore years because they won the Ohio Valley Conference tournament.
Along with Barker, Amy Seats is another new custodian.
Some of Amy’s favorite hobbies are hiking and walking her dog.
“I like to go to Colorado, Michigan and New York, but when I am here I like to go to Mounds State Park or out by the (Prairie Creek) reservoir,” Seats said.
Seats used to work in the automotive industry specializing in Jaguars. When she compared her older job to being a custodian, she described the new job as being more relaxed.
“I don’t have 20 people asking me this and doing that, and here I might see two to three people,” Seats said. “It is more physical and less mental. I did what I was doing for more than 30 years so I was ready for a change.”
Seats could be the reason why you have clean desks, emptied out pencil sharpeners, swept floors, and more clean surfaces.
