DAVIS, Calif. -- The night was November 21, 2017, and Dr. Raminder Gill, a clinical professor and staff physician at the UC Davis Medical Center, sat courtside at the still-new Golden 1 Center in Sacramento. No, this was not an appointment to watch the Kings, rather an opportunity to see his alma mater squaring off against Sacramento State in men's basketball action.
Among those seated in the front row was former Aggie star point guard Darius Graham, who had graduated the previous spring after helping the team to its first Division I NCAA Tournament berth. So was athletics director Kevin Blue and Chancellor Gary May, the latter of whom had joined the UC Davis family just three months earlier. Also in the premium seats was Bruce Edwards, whose name will adorn the student-athlete performance center built through a partnership with Gill's employer, UC Davis Health. Even former Sacramento mayor Kevin Johnson, who scored 730 career NBA points against the G1C's primary tenant, was on hand.
For Dr. Gill, the true VIPs in those courtside seats were his family: his wife Amardeep, son Parvinder, daughter Amrit, and parents Sucha and Gurcharn. They watched UC Davis secure a 64-47 win over its Causeway Cup rival. A photo of this night recently popped up as a "Facebook memory" on Raminder's social media feed, the site's first reminder since Sucha passed away in June.
"That was his one and only time – a grand experience – at the Golden 1 Center," Gill said of his late father. "It's a big venue, but the spirit and the passion that I saw from the UC Davis fans was real. I can tell that the community of Davis really does support the team, and that's neat to see."
In many ways, this pre-Thanksgiving treat represented Dr. Gill's association with UC Davis: a connection through the athletics department and a proud family tradition. A 1993 graduate in biochemistry, he had become quite familiar with the university throughout his upbringing in the Northern California town of Colusa. The campus has a Cooperative Extension headquarters in his hometown, while the Nickels Soil Lab resides in nearby Arbuckle.
"UC Davis has always been a part of my life," he said. "I didn't have any direct connections to it, but UC Davis was always mentioned in our small-town paper. From an athletics perspective, the 1980s were a great time. Ken O'Brien was a first-round draft pick and his team made the finals [in 1982]."
Remember, this was well before the rise of the Internet, meaning Gill followed the Aggies through the local newspaper and the Sacramento TV stations. The deeds of football standouts like O'Brien and Mike Moroski reached Gill's young eyes and ears. By 1985, his brother, Parvinder, began attending UC Davis as an undergraduate and the then-teenaged Raminder frequently visited his brother on campus. At that point, the Aggies' star quarterback was future coaching legend Chris Petersen, whose hometown of Yuba City sat just on the opposite side of the buttes from Colusa. The world of UC Davis athletics was quite literally brought closer to home.
Gill followed his brother to UC Davis in 1989, and quickly became involved with activities like the ASUCD student government and the Undergraduate Student Health Insurance Program, or USHIP. In fact, this forged one of his earliest direct connections to intercollegiate athletics. When the 1992-93 Phase III budget cuts threatened various programs and services such as ICA, students came together to pass what later became the Student Activities and Services Initiative, or SASI (pronounced "sassy," a nod to a popular Saturday Night Live sketch of the era). Gill allied with other student leaders, including a throng of student-athletes, to preserve the wealth of student resources on campus.
When he finished his undergraduate studies, Gill began seeking destinations for medical school. He had looked up to Parvinder, who was tragically killed in an accident near the end of Raminder's junior year at UC Davis. Parvinder was a third-year medical student at the time, and inspired his younger brother's academic journey. "I was sort of on cruise control, and he sent me down the right path," said Raminder.
Although Gill hoped to stay in Northern California, preferably at UC Davis, the campus faculty interviewer suggested he go out of state. Gill looked at the Medical College of Wisconsin, Tufts, and Tulane, but ultimately decided on The Ohio State University School of Medicine. Decades later, Gill still enjoys recounting an amusing side of that recommendation to leave California: the interviewer was a graduate of the University of Michigan – Ohio State's nemesis in perhaps the most storied matchup in college football history. In other words, he had unwittingly and unintentionally sent Gill to the rival school.
As it was, the Buckeye football program played a key role in Dr. Gill's time at Ohio State. He and several of his fellow medical students seized the opportunity to purchase season tickets. Gill became absorbed with Buckeye sports – to the point where he visited half the Big-10 Conference's stadiums and witnessed Eddie George's Heisman Trophy season of 1995.
"My introduction to the rivalry was painful, as the coach, John Cooper, was 2-10-1 against Michigan. But the last 20 years have been pretty good," says Gill. Indeed, his first year as a Buckeye med student was 1993, when U-M delivered its shocking 28-0 upset of then-undefeated and fifth-ranked Ohio State. Fortunately, in more recent years, OSU has claimed 17 of the last 19. (And yes, Dr. Gill's patients can expect to see the hints of scarlet and gray in their doctor's attire in late November every year.)
Throughout this time, Gill also remained faithful to the Aggies, and likely would have made the trek down Interstate 71 to Louisville, where the men's basketball team won the 1998 national title game. Alas, by this point, he was back in California, beginning an internship and subsequent residency at the UC Davis Medical Center. "Of my class of 210 at Ohio State medical school, there were four of us from UC Davis," Gill said. "I might have brought some of them, but it was sort of a busy time for all of us."
His fondness for Ohio State football also brought an indirect connection to the Aggie athletics department. As an alumnus and a doctor back in the Sacramento area, Gill contributed annually to the Buckeye Club. His contact was yet another UC Davis gradudate, Rob Norris, then a member of the Ohio State athletics development staff. This began a lasting friendship between the two Aggies. Three years later, Norris returned to UC Davis, where he previously had served as an event manager for both Recreation Hall (now the Pavilion) and ICA. Gill quickly discovered that Norris was no longer at Ohio State and back at their shared alma mater.
"When I heard he came home, just like me, to UC Davis, I decided it was time I stepped up and supported UC Davis athletics," Gill recalls. "I reached out to him. I actually felt bad that I hadn't done more. I had been going to basketball games but I found a way to put my proverbial 'money where my mouth is.'"
"I can't take credit," says Norris. "Raminder was going to start giving to the Aggies. He's a passionate alum who loves the school. He just needed something to get him started. He's a generous person who thinks of others before he thinks of himself. It was a matter of time before he did it, and maybe I helped trigger it a little bit."
Today, Dr. Gill enters his third decade with UC Davis Health, now as a physician and professor in the internal medicine department with a speciality in hospital medicine. He completed his residency with the medical center back in 2000, but felt he was not yet sufficiently experienced to set up a private practice. Thus, he opted stay with UC Davis to gain that expertise.
"My initial plan was three to five years, working at the hospital, while continuing to attend educational conferences and working with medical students and residents. Then I would reassess and go from there," said Gill. "This is Year 24, so I guess this is probably going to be my career. I think I've established that I like doing this."
Similar to that of the sports teams he continues to follow as an alumnus, his students and residents are a team, and Gill sees himself as their coach. This sense of mentorship strengthened when the medical school was consolidated onto the main Sacramento campus in the late 2000s, meaning first- and second-year students fell under his watch rather than being separated on the Davis campus. Moving these younger students to Sacramento afforded Gill more opportunities as an educator, as he guides them for the full four years – agai, not unlike a coach guiding student-athletes from their freshman through senior seasons.
"Being part of the UC Davis School of Medicine has been personally and professionally satisfying," says Gill. "Having watched a number of students from Year 1 through 4, seeing their development, having a chance to work with some of them in residency, then continuing to work with some of them at UC Davis – that has been a unique and gratifying experience."
Not surprisingly, the emergence of COVID-19 altered the workload put on staff physicians like Dr. Gill. Early in his career, his duties almost solely focused on supervising his team. Then in 2003, work-hour rules limited residents to "only" 80 hours per week. Dr. Gill and his colleagues took on the task of providing direct, independent care of patients. This all-hands-on-deck approach became even more crucial in 2020.
"Most of the COVID-19 patients are admitted to my group," he said. "With the recent surge, we're seeing more patients than we have at any time during this pandemic."
Bear in mind, this surge is an addition to both his teaching duties and his regular load of non-COVID care. As an internal medicine physician, he sees patients requiring attention for the various internal organs – heart, lungs, liver, kidneys, etc. – plus complications from diabetes, infections, undiagnosed cancer and cancer-related complications.
On top of that, Gill's small-town roots have him keeping an eye on areas of the state that might lack sufficient intensive care facilities. COVID typically takes 4-5 days before patients become symptomatic, he says, but during the seventh through 12th days is when conditions tend to worsen. Gill has had patients for whom he has provided virtual, remote care, only to see their oxygen requirements increase to the point of needing an ICU. Many of the smaller hospitals – such as those in his hometown of Colusa – do not have enough beds to accommodate the rising numbers of coronavirus cases. UC Davis Health, with its vast resources, frequently take in patients from a wide area of communities.
"That, in a nutshell, is what I have the privilege of doing at UC Davis Health."
This bears repeating: Dr. Gill sees this enormous responsibility as a privilege, not a burden. This is the very philosophy that has grown UC Davis Health into a leader in research and education. Individuals like Dr. Gill are also the reason the intercollegiate athletics department takes such pride in its partnership with the medical center, most notably in the construction of the Edwards Family Athletics Center –a partnership that also led the former Aggie Stadium to be renamed UC Davis Health Stadium in August of 2019
At some point, the coronavirus pandemic will subside, and activities such as major athletics events will return to normal. Dr. Gill looks forward to that day, not just from the crucial standpoint of a healthcare professional, but also as a sports fan. The opportunity to treat his family to an evening with the Aggies – like he did on that Tuesday three years ago at the Golden 1 Center – will return. And when that day comes, Dr. Gill's gratitude for the university will be reinforced even further.
"I knew since I was a kid that I would be a UC Davis Aggie, although I didn't know it would last this long outside the affiliation as an undergrad," he says. "I didn't think I would be a doctor of medicine, I didn't think I would work for UC Davis, but I knew in some aspect I would be an Aggie. I'm glad I became one and I'm glad I remain actively involved."
ABOUT UC DAVIS:
With the addition of equestrian and women's beach volleyball in 2018, more than 700 student-athletes represent the fifth-ranked public school in the nation on one of 25 intercollegiate athletics teams.
UC Davis, a national leader in Title IX gender equity and leadership, is centrally located between San Francisco, Lake Tahoe, and the Napa Valley; and offers an unrivaled student-athlete experience that features the ideal combination of elite academics, Division I athletics and personal growth.
Ranked annually in the top 10 in diversity and students' social mobility, UC Davis is uncommonly committed to preparing student-athletes for life after graduation with Aggie EVO — an innovative student-athlete outcomes program that helps young women and men develop passions, gain real-world experience, and enjoy a successful launch to full-time employment or graduate school. Through Aggie EVO, Intercollegiate Athletics provides unmatched resources and a vast network of working professionals to ensure post-graduation success for its student-athletes.
