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Local attorney eyes Olympics
By BOB McCLURE
| Article published on Tuesday, Sept. 15, 2009 |
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| Arbitration and mediation attorney Kitty Grubb can be found in high school press boxes Friday nights serving as an assistant clock operator and spotter. |
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SEMINOLE – While most people have their eyes peeled on the field at high school football games, Kitty Grubb of Seminole is busy in the press box as a member of the referee team.
As an assistant clock operator and spotter, Grubb, 57, is a long way from the court rooms where she gained notoriety as one of the nation’s top arbitration and mediation attorneys. But in essence, she is not.
By working with the Sunshine Football Officials Association, she is strengthening her local credentials for what she hopes will result in being selected as an international sports mediator and arbitrator at the Olympic level.
Grubb said the position, which is a volunteer job, makes key decisions involving international sports.
“For example, is the South African runner (Caster Semenya) a male or female runner?” she said. “Does Tanya Harding get to skate (after the Nancy Kerrigan incident)? Which team actually won a gold medal in skating? Who wins a time trial, such as in running and bicycling?”
Grubb said there are various ways to resolve things but resolutions are key to the success of international sports and, ultimately, international relations.
“It’s important that nations compete in a friendly manner,” she said. “It started with Ping Pong Diplomacy with (former president Richard) Nixon and China. (Ping pong competition between the U.S. and China) opened the door for the U.S. and China to restore relations.”
In a few weeks Grubb will attend The Referee College at the Olympic Training Center in Chula Vista, Calif., for a three-day crash course in becoming an international rowing official.
“It’s the third most populous sport,” Grubb said. “I’m a candidate trainee to become a rowing referee. I’m half way there.”
Sports have long been a part of her life since growing up in the small town of Chesterfield, S.C.
“All my relatives played sports,” she said. “For me, it was basketball and horseback riding. Then later on, I played basketball in high school and lettered.”
After that she attended and played basketball at Sullins College in Bristol, Va., before transferring to the University of Alabama and later earning her first law degree from Cumberland College outside Birmingham, Ala.
Grubb followed that up by graduating in the top 5 percent of her class at New York University Graduate School of Law with an LL.M degree in taxation law.
That was just the beginning.
For more than 14 years she fought and later won a case involving an EEO challenge to the qualifying standards for promotions used by two federal agencies. The case involved 19,462 individuals in a class action that resulted in a relief settlement.
The case was noteworthy because it removed barriers to full employment and mobility of more than 10,000 female federal workers.
Even more impressive, she did it at no expense to the plaintiffs.
While in the process of litigating the case, Grubb found time to pick up additional law degrees in securities regulation from Georgetown University Law Center and litigation and dispute resolution from George Washington University Law School.
Eleven years ago, she came to Florida to retire and admits “it got boring.”
That’s when Grubb became involved as a Florida-qualified arbitrator and certified mediator with cases involving the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, the largest independent regulator for securities firms.
But Grubb’s story doesn’t end there. She stays busy as a life member of the Seminole Friends of the Library, works as a local precinct supervisor during elections and a member of the Community Emergency Response Team through Largo Fire Rescue.
In addition, she has served as a community ambassador for the Super Bowl, Atlantic Coast Conference football championship game, Southeastern Conference Basketball Tournament and a volunteer for the Morton Plant Mease Triathlon and the Great American Teach-In.
Grubb also serves regularly as a guest lecturer on legal issues to fourth-year medical students at East Tennessee State University and performed disaster assistance following Hurricane Katrina in Bayou LaBatre, Ala. She will soon work as a volunteer with Hospice of the Florida Suncoast.
In addition to the football officials association, Grubb also officiates basketball games through the Pinellas Area Referees, as well as USSSA contests and Junior Magic basketball games.
Her interest in sports comes from many factions but Grubb said it teaches many good lessons.
“Most everyone wants to win but there’s something to be learned from losing,” she said. “First, you learn you don’t like losing. So it teaches you to find new, improved or different ways to accomplish your goals. It teaches ethics and sportsmanship and the realization of knowing you won’t hit all your shots and that you have to practice to get better. We learn that there’s always somebody better than we are.”
Grubb said it’s erroneous to think constantly about winning and being the best.
“This is not to disrespect a national championship,” she said, “but we have the tendency to forget who finished No. 2 or No. 3. You’ve normally got some close competition and any of those teams easily could have been the winner.
“Sports are good because you use them throughout your life,” Grubb added. “But it’s not your whole life. You have to remember you’re always one injury away from not having a life in sports.”
Grubb said there is a shortage of good high school officials and encourages anyone with an interest in sports to become involved.
For information, go to FHSAA.org, click on the Contest Officials link, and then the link on “How to become an official.”
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Article published on Tuesday, Sept. 15, 2009
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