By CHERYL ROMANO/YachatsNews.com
One winter day at Yachats’ social hub (the Post Office), a well-known local realtor ran into an acquaintance. “I’ve retired from real estate,” she announced “and gone back to basketball.”
Huh? After all, D.J. (Debra Jane) Novgrod was a fixture in area real estate for years, well-connected in the Presbyterian church, and in civic affairs.
But basketball?
“Yes,” she said. “I’m a volunteer assistant coach with the Waldport girls’ team. I was a college coach back in the day — even worked as a referee in Division 1.”
Now the man was impressed, too. Division 1 is the pinnacle of college sports in America, and to referee at that level takes big credentials and skill. Novgrod had both in hefty measure. The credentials came from teaching, coaching and refereeing high school and college sports in the 1970s and ‘80s. The skill took longer to hone, germinating in her New Jersey childhood.
“My father was a very good athlete. He was a state tennis champion in New Jersey, and also played basketball and baseball. I was his little athlete,” Novgrod says. A brother 12 years her senior was also a talented baseball player, so sports was a natural part of life as she grew up in Maplewood, N.J., an affluent Manhattan suburb.
“Not the most socially-accepted area”
Novgrod held to that sports trajectory for decades, fueled by one of her main personality traits: “I’m a competitor.”
At Maplewood Junior High, she played basketball and softball, and was head of the girls’ athletic association. “I was in seventh grade when I realized I wanted to be a phys ed (physical education) teacher… not the most socially-accepted area to go into when I was growing up.” Not surprisingly, she was voted “most athletic” in high school. And she persisted, going on to earn her bachelor’s degree in physical education and health from nearby Montclair State University. While she was at it in Montclair, she notched second place in doubles tennis.
Over the next several years, the locations and jobs changed, but the drive to compete — and especially to teach — stayed strong. Novgrod taught and coached sports in New Jersey public schools for four years. She earned her master’s degree in physical education teaching and administration from Springfield College in Massachusetts. She coached basketball, softball and field hockey at Gettysburg College in Pennsylvania — where, under her leadership, the field hockey team won a national championship.
Novgrod’s last professional sports stop was outside Chicago at Elmhurst College (now University), where she was assistant professor of physical education and head women’s basketball coach. The trophy case there still displays a photo of Coach D.J. with her team for their 24-9 record in 1986.
“Iron Mike” Ditka — and a re-awakening
Spirituality has played a big role in the Yachats’ resident’s life. She was faculty adviser to Christian athletes at Elmhurst, and that’s how she met football great “Iron Mike” Ditka.
“All the Elmhurst professional coaches would work at camps in the summer to put on clinics and workshops,” she says. At one such camp in Indiana she met Ditka, a pro football Hall of Famer who was then coach of the Chicago Bears.
“Mike was a serious guy, all business, a little rough and gruff,” Novgrod said. What she remembers most about the camp, though, is “That’s where I had a kind of born-again experience. It got me into the whole idea of being in service.”
Being in service is another theme in Novgrod’s life, but it wasn’t apparent until she applied herself to two more careers: running a bed-and-breakfast, and working in real estate.
“After teaching at Elmhurst for five years, I thought, ‘Is this all there is to life? There’s got to be more.’” So she quit her teaching post, and moved to Oregon with her then-partner, Gabrielle Duvall, the ex-wife of actor Robert Duvall’s brother. The couple decided to open a bed and breakfast at an oceanfront property in Waldport called Cliff House, and spent 18 months on renovations.
“We gutted it out. I did all the plumbing, and we replaced 42 windows and doors,” says Novgrod. “After we opened, it became another ministry, like teaching had been my first ministry. We used to talk about ‘birds with broken wings’ coming to be healed, or to start a relationship.”
Not for the first time, Novgrod faced anti-female bias.
“The man across the street told people we must be opening a whorehouse, ‘cause why would two women want a house with five bedrooms? That’s what we were fighting against.”
Still, the venture was “very popular, and it almost killed us,” Novgrod says. “Most innkeepers last five years; we lasted six.”
After the bed and breakfast adventure, the New Jersey native found another outlet for her competitive nature: real estate. Not long after starting out — first in Waldport and then Yachats — she collected headlines along with commissions. “Novgrod … named to Coldwell Banker Diamond Society”… “Novgrod in top 10 in state in commissions” announced a few of her clippings. Yes, the pay was better (some four times more than she made in school athletics), but that’s not what kept her at it for 22 years.
“It was another ministry,” she says. “I was still teaching — teaching people how to buy houses, land and businesses. Once a teacher, always a teacher.”
This stage of life also brought her marriage, divorce and parenthood of a son, Andrew, now 18.
“What good is knowledge if you can’t share it?”
Although she officially retired from real estate last August, Novgrod just can’t stop teaching: she’s a mentor for two agents in her former office, Emerald Coast Realty. And until mid-February, she was still coaching. When the Waldport High girls’ basketball team finished its season, assistant coach Novgrod finished her latest volunteer stint.
In 2018, 2019 and again this winter Novgrod was an assistant to basketball coach and athletic director Les Keele. Often playing without a full squad due to Covid-19, the Irish ended their season fifth in their league and with an overall record of 8-10.
“The girls loved her,” said Keele. “They knew she cares about them and the game. It’s been great having her knowledge and experience.”
For Novgrod, high school coaching was “more about building relationships at that age” than necessarily winning.
“It’s a microcosm of society — teaching them how to get along, how to be leaders,” Novgroad says. “After all, what good is knowledge if you can’t share it?”
Now, after the end of the season, Novgrod, 70, is content to let her competitive side take a back seat to more leisurely pursuits.
“I’ve always been in competition with myself to be the best I can, but my desires have changed. People and relationships are much more important to me now.”
She plans to buy herself some new golf clubs (“to play — for fun!”), travel, paint and maybe putter in the garden.
“If I’m in the game,” she reflected on her sports ventures, “I’m in it every second.”
Chances are that her retirement will look a lot like that, too.
- Know someone in south Lincoln County whose life makes you think “Wow! They did that?” Let us know. Send a few details (your name, their name, short description, contact info) to YachatsNews@gmail.com
- Cheryl Romano is a Yachats freelance reporter who contributes regularly to YachatsNews.com. She can be reached at Wordsell@gmail.com
