My former UCM football teammate from Odessa is fighting brain cancer. He needs help | Opinion

When I was an 18-year-old freshman defensive back on the University of Central Missouri football team, linebacker Joe Grubb was one of the leaders of our defense. Grubb, an 1989 graduate of Odessa High School, was a hard-hitting, athletic and tough football player. He had a mean streak, too.

What else would you expect from an Odessa Bulldog and a Central Missouri Mule?

This week, I spoke with my former teammate. It was one of the toughest conversations of my life. Last year, doctors diagnosed Grubb, 53, with a brain cancer known as glioblastoma. It’s an aggressive cancer, Grubb told me. There is no cure, just treatment, he said. Since last July, he’s undergone brain surgery twice.

I had learned of Grubb’s cancer diagnosis through a Facebook post. Almost immediately, I cried. Emotionally, I’m still reeling from the news.

Another former teammate organized a GoFundMe page to help Grubb and his family during this difficult time. Until recently he worked as a carpenter for J.E. Dunn Construction, a gig he held since 2014. Because of recurring seizures associated with glioblastoma, Grubb cannot be on a construction site, he told me.

During our talk, Grubb and I reflected on what it meant to be a UCM football player. We spoke of the mutual respect we have for each other — not only as former teammates but also as dads and family men. Grubb is a married father of three with one grandchild. He mentioned how he’d followed my work since I joined The Star as a breaking news reporter in 2016. To gain Grubb’s respect was something I’d tried to do since my freshman year in 1992, I told him. After a brief silence — you could hear a pin drop — Grubb choked up.

“Thank you Tory,” he said. “That means a lot.”

Inducted into UCM Athletics Hall of Fame

I felt compelled to share with Grubb the admiration I have for him. He needed to hear the impact he made on this then lanky, know-it-all teenager from south St. Louis. Back then, I thought I knew what it took to be a successful college football player. Ha! Not even close.

Grubb exemplified the qualities of a great student-athlete, I told him. And I was thankful to not only to call him a teammate, but a brother for life.

“We put that Mule jersey on for the same reason,” Grubb said. “It didn’t matter if you were from south St. Louis, Kansas City or some poke doke town like Odessa, Missouri.”

On the field, Grubb was the epitome of what it meant to be a Mule, our team mascot: ferocious and tenacious with a stubborn refusal to lose or quit. Off the field, the biology major rarely caused trouble on or off campus, lifted weights relentlessly and religiously studied game film of upcoming opponents.

As an underclassman, I looked up to most of the veterans on the team. None more so than Grubb. He was the standard. In 2010, Grubb was elected into the UCM Athletics Hall of Fame, an honor reserved for some of the best athletes to ever play a sport at the Division II school in Warrensburg.

His UCM Hall of Fame bio gives a snippet of what type of player Grubb was. It reads: “Grubb ranks second in school history with 333 tackles (180 solo, 153 assists). He was a second-team Football Gazette All-American in 1991 before a foot injury robbed him of much of his 1992 campaign. He also was first-team All-MIAA pick in 1991 and 1992, and a third-team All-MIAA selection in 1990. He posted the second-most tackles in Mules single-season history in 1991 with 141 stops (one short of the record) and his 22 tackles (19 solo) at Pittsburg State in 1991 is tied for third-most in a game.”

Retired William Jewell head coach: ‘just a tough deal’

Jeff Floyd is a former defensive coordinator at Central Missouri. He is also a former head coach at William Jewell College in Liberty and Truman High School in Independence. Floyd retired from coaching but recruited me to UCM out of high school. Decades later, we’ve stayed in touch.

In addition to being the architect of a defense known as “Dirty Red,” Floyd coached linebackers back then, too. Floyd likened Grubb to a coach on the field.

He described Grubb’s cancer diagnosis as “just a tough deal,” Floyd said.

He added: “You know the saying, ‘good players make good coaches?’ Well, at UCM we had a stretch where we had a very good defense — and that was because we had a core group of very good players on defense. And at the heart of that core group of players was Joe Grubb.

“Joe epitomized what we were looking for on defense. He bought into our system completely, worked extremely hard at his craft and played fast and played hard. Joe was often an ‘eraser’ for our defense, making up for any mistakes we made, including mistakes I made in calling the game.”

At heart of Mule Ball Brothers for Life

I redshirted in 1992 — meaning I practiced every day but did not play a single snap in a game. But I was honored to be among a group Floyd described as special. Among our peers, Grubb was the unquestioned leader of a nationally-ranked defense.

“That group on defense was, and still is, special and tight-knit,” Floyd said. “There is a group of 15 to 20 former players that still keep in touch, still get together and relive the old days and love each other. Joe is the center of that group as well. I love Joe Grubb.”

For the past few years, Grubb has been at the heart of the group MBBL — Mule Ball Brothers for Life. It’s UCM’s way of trying to connect the different eras of UCM football in the hopes of helping the current coaches and players at the school, Floyd said.

Now, one of MBBL’s founding members needs help and Grubb is appreciative of their efforts.

“All of my Mule guys are fighting for me,” he said.

By the way, Grubb still calls Odessa home and his impact there is evident. Next year, one of his three daughters, Kinly Grubb, will begin her first year as an assistant coach for the varsity girls basketball team at Odessa High.

Kinly graduated from Odessa in 2018 and is a former college basketball player at Fort Hays State and Baker universities.

Although Grubb’s father Robert “Bob” Grubb was honored in memoriam as part of the 2015-16 Odessa R-VII Public Foundation Hall of Fame class, my former teammate is not among the inductees. I believe he should be.

I call on the Odessa community to consider honoring one of the finest football players and men I’ve known to come out of Odessa High.