RIP, Randy Solorio

I didn't know Randy except by sight, and in the company of Jori Gonzales. He had a big impact, though, especially at Sac State.

 

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Sacramento State is saddened to announce the passing of former Hornet gymnastics coach Randy Solorio following a lengthy battle with cancer. He was 63 years old.

A fixture on the Sacramento State campus for nearly 40 years, Solorio served as an assistant coach, head coach and kinesiology instructor since 1986.

"The man loved Sac State, this was his home, and his family," current head coach Melissa Genovese said. "Randy's impact goes far beyond the gymnastics floor. Some could argue his ballroom dance class was the most popular class on campus. You couldn't go anywhere on campus without someone knowing Randy. His personality and love of life was contagious, and he always looked at the positive side of everything. That outlook and his years of dedication had a profound impact on Sac State gymnastics and every person he met."

Solorio was the head coach of the Hornets from 2016-23. His first season at the helm saw Sacramento State win the Mountain Pacific Sports Federation championship and saw four Hornet gymnasts advance to the NCAA West Regional. That season, the team posted three top 10 overall scores, including the two best scores in school history. His teams went on to add three more top 10 marks and account for over half of the top totals in program history.

...Outside of gymnastics, Solorio taught ballroom dancing and weightlifting classes for the kinesiology department and was also a member of the UEI board. Throughout his life he starred in local theater, musicals and commercials in Sacramento. Solorio regularly showcased his vocal skills by singing the national anthem prior to meets where he was accompanied by his wife, Jori, and daughter Kaycee.

Solorio began his tenure at Sacramento State in 1986 as an assistant coach under Kim Hughes. The duo proved to be a great team, guiding the Hornets to seven conference titles. The Hornets also made their first NCAA regional team appearance during the stretch, advancing to the postseason in 1999, 2006, 2007 and 2008.

...Prior to coaching, Solorio was a decorated gymnast himself, earning All-America honors on vault, high bar and floor exercise while competing for UC Davis from 1980-82. He finished his academic career at Sacramento State where he earned a bachelor of science in exercise science and master's in sports performance.

Randy was active in the early days of Davis Musical Theatre Company (DMTC): 

Billy Flynn         Chicago     Mar-Apr 1986 

Johnny Casino      Grease     Oct-Nov 1987 

Carnival Barker and Principal Hornpipe Dancer (Sunday Matinees)     Carousel     Feb-Mar 1988

Today's Sacramento Protest - 50501 - February 5, 2025

Today, I went down to the noontime 50501 demonstration at the California State Capitol. 

First thing to do before I headed down was to get some poster board and a magic marker. I needed something pithy to write. I chose "It's Elon, or Us" on one side, and "Resist! (Do not cooperate with them)" on the other. I also brought back the poster I nicked from the protest last week. 

Last week, the protestors were a small group - intimate, really. Today's group was much larger - many baby boomers remembering protests of yore, plus entire new generations of protestors. Prior to the protest, messages went out on Reddit and Indivisible discouraging attendance (It might be dangerous! The protest has no formal organizers!), and I think turnout was lower for that. 

It's interesting how the news media fails to capture events like this. The general line is that hundreds of people showed up, but that's because the reporters waited until the protest was nearly over before making their appearance. Cowardice, anyone? I got there early, and I estimated the crowd as being between 1,000 and 2,000 - say, 1,500 people. 

Lots of clever, original signs at the protest. There were at least two signs I liked with the slogan, "I Drink My Horchata Warm Because FUCK ICE." I handed the sign I got last week to a woman at the protest there (she worried about taking the sign home on the bus and poking bus riders with the poster's corners). There were folks in Mexican regalia, and others with UFW flags. There was a woman with a sign "We Need a Feminomenon" (a nod to Chappel Roan). I complimented a young woman for her sign and she gestured back to my sign, and then had the signs *kiss*. I tried talking with her but then realized she couldn't really reply - she was incapacitated in some way, and mute. Lots of cute dogs at the protest. Many people photographed a little bulldog with an anti-ICE sign on his head. 

There was not much organization visible at the protest and there were no speakers. (Protests since the Occupy protests of 2011 greatly-downplay any leadership influence.) The steps on the West Side of the Capitol have four broad levels, and each level had its own flavor. Call-and-response chants rose and fell. There was only one person I'd label as a protest aficionado. Everyone else were people greeting friends they hadn't seen since before the pandemic. 

I walked back and forth with my sign. I didn't see anyone I saw last week, but I did see a former coworker, plus a former Zumba compatriot. I saw a politician too (I suppose no surprise there, given the terrain), but I'm unsure who he was. I walked up to the doors of the State Capitol, looked in, and could see schoolchildren on a Capitol tour walking up a staircase. 

At future protests I'd like to see speakers. I'd also like to recreate the intimate protest of last week even at events like this. Carve out a little corner at the edge of the crowd and have people speak their own truths. I need a little megaphone. Someone at today's protest had a little battery-powered megaphone, but he wasn't really using it properly. 

I recall back in 1979, becoming friends with graduate student Dennis Cohen, part of the curious culture of permanent graduate students found at most large universities. Dennis was studying for a degree in Nuclear Engineering so he could be the most-effective advocate ever against Nuclear Power. His one great moment was getting his picture on the front page of the Denver Post for leading a protest at the University of Wyoming, a protest he was able to control because he controlled the megaphone. I don't know if Dennis ever completely-graduated. Here is a reference from 2010:

This summer he won third place in the screenplay competition of the 2010 Alaska International Film Awards. 

...By night he writes and revises his literary pursuits. His screenplay, “Caroline and Johann: A Love Story,” is a fictional retelling of the historical 18th Century affair between the Queen of Denmark Caroline Matilda of Great Britain and the royal court physician.

...His thesis, a study of computer simulations of energy transfer in the atmosphere titled, “Discrete ordinate and Monte Carlo simulations for polarized radiative transfer in a coupled system with non-Rayleigh scattering,” seems worlds away from an ill-fated love affair. But Cohen, who holds master’s degrees in Physics from the University of Wyoming and Nuclear Engineering from the University of New Mexico, says he is simply pursuing his two passions. “My plan was to do physics and to write,” Cohen says, citing other writer-academics like Lewis Carroll (a mathematician) and Charles Percy Snow (a physicist). “It is possible, but it’s not that easy,” Cohen explains.

I've lost the plot a bit. Yes, today's demonstration was good, and bigger than the news media say.  And like Dennis, I need a megaphone. 

The local media aren't really covering this story. Only Channel 3 has a story, and they arrived quite late.

Useless

A darkly-amusing article about how incapable our Democratic Senators are in meeting the challenge of the moment:

How did it come to this? Democrats have built their entire party structure on polite deference, seniority, and chasing bipartisanship as an outcome, as opposed to elevating the most talented and passionate politicians into roles in which they can make impact or articulating, defending, and expanding the role of what government can do to improve the lives of others. 

We’ve seen the most dramatic, damaging outgrowths of this approach to Washington politics, in the form of the protracted propping up of the late Dianne Feinstein as senator and Joe Biden as president, not to mention Democratic-appointed Supreme Court justices preferring to die or risk death to being replaced by a Democratic president. But this deference also has poisoned our politics in corrosive ways, with institutional seniority locking in apathy and entitlement among Democratic leaders. The party’s unwillingness to separate themselves from age-old, meaningless decorum that rewards length of tenure as opposed to strength of conviction in its elected officials has meant that the people in charge of Congress’s most important panels are often the oldest, and most out of touch.