By Maddox Weddle
He shoots the trash into a trashcan, making it seem like he’s back in the Muncie Fieldhouse with the lights on the court and pressure on his back
Janitor Rob Barker, unless you sit down and get to know you wouldn’t know he was a NCAA D1 basketball player and played in the March Madness Tournament.
Barker, now 61 years old, played high school basketball at Muncie Central in front of thousands of fans almost every single week. Even when smaller or weaker schools came to play the Bearcats, the tickets were completely sold out.
“When I graduated in 1982, Blackford would come to the fieldhouse and the fieldhouse was sold out. We played in front of 6,000 to 7,000 fans every home game,” Barker said.
“It was just a thrill to walk into that fieldhouse, walk out of the locker room, and come out on that court and just look around and just see the place packed. It was unbelievable.”
Barker was a pretty dominant player on a pretty dominant team back in the early 1980’s. During his time on the team, Muncie Central was one of the best teams in the state, making it to the semi-state finals when there was no multi-class system.
All that work and skill he put into his regular season games punched himself a starting spot at the Sertoma all star game. This is when the Muncie seniors and the Anderson seniors played in a game at the Ball State basketball arena.
Barker didn’t just make the game, he dominated the game having a career-high 26 points. That got the attention of Morehead State college in Morehead, Ky.
He got lucky because Morehead needed a shooting guard, which is what Barker played. His coach at the time, Bill Harrell, also was a former Morehead State coach and helped him get there.
When Barker got to college he was behind six strong juniors who averaged 8 or more points a game. Barker still played in 25 out of the 26 games, averaging 2.7 points a game in limited playing time.
Morehead State had a good enough season to get the two seed out of the four spots in the Ohio Valley Conference Tournament. They went into the tournament 17-10 and played third- seeded Tennessee Tech in a close game with the final score being Morehead State winning 54-53. On the other side of the bracket fourth-seeded Akron upset the top seed Murray State.
In the championship game Morehead made sure they were on their game, dominating Akron in a 81-65 win. That win got them an automatic bid into the NCAA Tournament.
That was the first time in school history that the team has ever gone and they got themselves a first round game against Syracuse. The Eagles couldn’t defy the odds, coming up short losing 59-74.
Barker’s sophomore season the six juniors from the year before stayed and had an even bigger impact, with them all averaging 9.2 points or more a game. So Barker did not find much playing time, only getting on average 5.3 minutes per game with 1.3 points a game.
Morehead State still managed to repeat in the OVC Championship. They made a second appearance in the NCAA Tournament against Louisville in the first round after they beat North Carolina A&T in a play-in game by one point. They came up 13 points short to Louisville in the first round, losing 52-79.
His junior year was his breakout when the six seniors left so that was a perfect window to become one of the stars of the show. Barker averaged 10.9 points a game being the second leading scorer behind Bob McCann, who was a sophomore and averaged 17.1 points a game. McCann went on to be the 32nd overall pick in the 1987 NBA draft. But with no other stars on the team they only had a 7-20 record, not being able to three-peat in the OVC Championship.
Barker felt when he played that people tried harder and hooped all day everyday getting roughed up on the concrete. Barker has had two hips replaced just from the wear and tear of playing outside.
He said today’s ball is just being played inside in AAU (Amateur Athletic Union) tournaments and not played as hard as it was back then.
“Today’s kids are just pampered and they feel entitled, and you have to go out and earn everything that you get,” Barker said. “Nobody gives you things. Today’s kids get their hands out and then they think somebody’s just gonna give them something.”
After college Barker went on to play some top division adult leagues around the Muncie area but he quit because he said it was too difficult of a process to get people to play in the top leagues. Then Barker went on to referee high school sports such as basketball, volleyball and softball.
He said he got into it mostly because he loves sports and somebody needed a referee one day so he took him up on it.
Barker was officiating a volleyball game one time between Hagerstown and Winchester when there was someone with Delta attire in the Hagerstown section. After the second set finished he turned around and said to the guy “Hey, sir, you got the wrong jacket on for the section you’re sitting in.” That turned out to be maintenance director Chris Pyle.
They eventually talked after the game and Pyle said to him that he had an open custodian/groundskeeper position at Delta. Barker walked in the next Monday, got an application and has never looked back since.
