After 37 years of work at Bakersfield college, athletic secretary Barbie Hobbs has retired.

“They conned me into it,” said Hobbs jokingly. “You know, ‘come on down here, this is an easy job, you’ll have fun.’

“Well, it was not an easy job [but] I always had fun,” said Hobbs when recalling how she was placed into the position she held for the majority of her career at BC.

Born and raised in Bakersfield, Hobbs began working at BC seasonally in 1974 and began working full time four years later in the admissions department until retiring this year.

“It’s been good, but you got to know when it’s time to go,” said Hobbs.

Hobbs said she began thinking she should retire when she began to notice she had seen three generations of athletes go through BC.

“You think one day ‘now’s the time.’ I’ve had players where their fathers played, where their grandfathers played … This year I went, ‘is your dad so and so?’ Oh my god I remember him … ‘ that’s like a 20-year span,” said Hobbs.

While her job mostly involved planning and coordinating for the athletics programs Hobbs said she spent a lot of time assisting BC students and staff who had broken down while on the road.

“The worst thing was with Pam Kelley one year. She broke down at Mt. SAC and we got a van from school, my husband and I, we went over the Grapevine. Of course he’s cursing all the way because it started raining, then we hit the fog and then there’s snow. Then we get down to where she is and she’s parked. In the middle of a dirt lot – deep in water – flooded. So we pull up and we can’t save the van so we get the athletes we can take with us and we drive her back and someone else has to go save the van.

“That was an interesting trip. I had a lot of those.”

While mainly working with planning and coordinating events, Hobbs said working with the players is the highlight of her time at BC.

“Just working with all the athletes. Because you got women, a lot of them have kids some of them have two, three kids. Young mothers and they come with kids.

“They go to school, they work, and then they have families. To me that’s incredible. They graduate, they move on, they play somewhere else and take their families with them.”

Hobbs also finds joy in former BC athletes who stay in the Bakersfield community. “If you look at the high schools, a lot of the coaches who are at the high schools are BC products. I went to the East High Hall of Fame dinner and I’m sitting around the table and every one of those guys played at BC one time or another.

“We produce a product and they come back,” said Hobbs.

Hobbs plans to stay in the community herself. With her retirement beginning Hobbs said she has “no plans whatsoever” for the future, but does want to be involved with the Bakersfield community and the BC athletic department.

Hobbs may be working with the softball program this spring.