While COVID-19 restrictions kept him home, this Duke coach decides it’s time to retire
Rather than coaching his 30th season of Duke track and field this month, Norm Ogilvie found himself at home thanks to the coronavirus pandemic.
It gave the 60-year-old coach time to think and decide that he’s ready to do something other than coach.
Ogilvie, on Duke’s staff since 1991 and a head coach since 2000, announced his retirement on Thursday morning.
“With all the extra time I’ve had on my hands over the recent weeks during the stay at home orders for COVID-19, I’ve been able to do much thinking about what I want to do with the rest of my life,” Ogilvie said in a statement released by Duke. “I’ve done more than just coach, and while I loved nearly every minute of my years with our track program, I feel there needs to be a final meaningful chapter for the remaining years I have on our rapidly changing planet. What that exactly is remains to be seen, but I want to be able to contribute my experience and acquired wisdom to whatever opportunities present themselves in what will prove to be a world with a new normal.”
A 1981 Drake graduate, Ogilvie has been Duke’s head coach for men’s track and field and men’s cross country since 2000. Since 2003, he’s also been the school’s director of track and field, overseeing male and female athletes.
The Blue Devils won the ACC cross country championship in his first season as head coach, the first time since 1977 they had done so, and he was named the league’s coach of the year.
Since he became track and field director, he has helped coach 284 all-ACC selections. That includes three NCAA individual champions: Shannon Rowbury (women’s indoor mile, 2007), Juliet Bortoff (women’s outdoor 10,000m, 2011) and Curtis Beach (men’s indoor heptathlon, 2012 and 2014).
His wife, Jan, coaches Duke’s jumpers. While she plans to continue doing so once college athletics resume, Norm Ogilvie’s coaching will end when his retirement becomes official in July.
“I am at least humble enough to know that this announcement has small importance in the current big picture, but I feel it is important enough to the Duke community of track & field student-athletes and alums that I explain my reasoning,” Ogilvie said. “I have been fortunate enough to stay put at one Division I school long enough to develop a true love for its values, culture and commitment to excellence in all things. I’ve tried to do my part over the last three decades, taking a declining men’s team all the way back to the top of the ACC in cross country, taking six Duke cross country teams to the NCAA meet, and also helping to establish Duke University as one of the top women’s track and field teams in the ACC on a consistent basis. We have won NCAA individual titles and put multiple Duke athletes on the Olympic team. Not once did we do so compromising the academic mission of one of the world’s great institutions of higher learning.”
Duke athletics director Kevin White’s search for Ogilvie’s replacement will be put on hold due to social restrictions in place nationwide as health officials attempt to slow COVID-19’s spread. In the meantime, Duke named associate head coach Shawn Wilbourn as the interim track and field coach while assistant coach Rhonda Riley will become the interim cross country coach.
“To be sure, we are deeply appreciative of Norm’s dedication and commitment to foster a spirit of collegiality and excellence relative to ‘all things’ Duke University, notwithstanding, Duke Athletics,” Duke athletics director Kevin White said in a statement. “Moreover, we are indeed grateful for Norm’s unqualified integrity, and per his unwavering effort to provide the very best possible student-athlete experience. Wishing Norm all the very best in his coaching retirement, as well as per the next chapter.”