Camarin Madigan:: My name is Camarin Madigan. When I went to Grinnell my name was Camarin Bailey. I currently live in Walnut Creek, California and I’m a member of the Grinnell College Class of 2000. My Grinnell story starts probably my freshman year when I started playing water polo at Grinnell. I came to Grinnell to have a great education and to also play sports, and I played soccer and swimming. And someone asked me if I wanted to come out for the water polo team, and I’d played a little bit in high school but I wasn’t very good. And I quickly realized that being from California and knowing the rules to the water polo game qualified me to be possibly a captain or 
Camarin Madigan:: at least an assistant captain. And also to help run the program. And we had lots of fun playing club water polo my first three years. My fourth year, my senior year, we, I guess, got a little more organized, or at least the conference got a little more organized, and we had a couple tournaments at the school and then we went and played in Macalester for regionals, which we placed second in the tournament, which was kind of exciting for us, but then that meant that we qualified for nationals. That’s club water polo, Division III, co-ed nationals, which has lots of adjectives describing it, but it was nationals nonetheless. 
Camarin Madigan:: And with our budget which included maybe enough money for a keg party at the end of the season, we didn’t really have enough money to fly to Maine- to Colgate I think, is where the meet was. So the captain of the team that year went and talked to SGA, and we talked to the Athletic Department, and no one had money in their budget to send a couple of kids from Iowa to Maine. And it was right before fall break and that Friday morning I had class at eight in the morning, so I got up early, which, when you’re in college, getting up for an eight o’clock class is definitely early. But getting up at seven to go over 
Camarin Madigan:: to professor- President Osgood’s house- his office, and it’s of course locked up, but he always gets to the office very early so I went over to his office window, and knocked on his window. And he was a little bit shocked, I think, to see a student standing out there, because I don’t think any students are up usually at seven in the morning. And knocked on his window, he invited me in, and I pitched it to him. I said, “Look it, we are a club team, yes we are on the swim team, and that’s obviously a Division III sport, but the club team was supported by the college but not necessarily funded. And we had- 
Camarin Madigan:: We wanted to go to this tournament." And he said, “Well, have you talked…?” And I explained all the different avenues we’d gone through just to see if we could find money. And he said, “Well, that makes sense. Tell me a little bit about why we should do this. And you know, we can’t just send everyone.” And I said, “These kids have- We’ve, you know, qualified for nationals and this is something that the schools always talks about— is how we want to be known nationally. And how can we go nationally if we can’t compete at national competitions? And it’s not like we just want to go to this competition. We earned this right, and we won, and that’s a big thing and I think the college should support us.” And he said, “Well, I have some of my money, discretionary presidential fund money and I’m willing to give that to you 
Camarin Madigan:: to fly ten people to Maine for the weekend to play in this tournament.” And I said, “Well that’s great, but when we get there, we’ll also need to stay in hotels, so where do we get the money for that?” He said, “Well, here, we’ll take care of it. Get the names of the ten people you’re going to send to my secretary before noon today and she’ll make sure you have plane reservations put together.” And he talked about which airport to fly into and gave us all sorts of suggestions. And so that’s what we did. We flew to Maine for the weekend. We took our assistant coach Jim Randall with us as our chaperone. It was one of the most memorable weekends of my life at Grinnell, 
Camarin Madigan:: just because I was with my friends and we were doing what we loved, and we got the college to pay for it, which was something we thought was a big hoot at the time. But looking back on it, it really shows how much Grinnell supports its students, its student athletes, and the programs that we’re interested in. We did get annihilated at nationals by teams that were much, much bigger than us. But we were supported by a whole stand full of people because in addition to flying us to Maine, the college helped get us into contact with all the alumni who lived in Maine who never saw Grinnellians that often and we never were sent out there. And so when they heard that their nationally ranked college water polo team was coming, they came 
Camarin Madigan:: out in droves. You know, all thirteen or so of them. And they were there to cheer us on and we had a great time and we still, now, this is our ten year reunion, so ten years later we’re still talking about how much fun we had that weekend and how that weekend really epitomizes what Grinnell meant to us: having fun, doing something neat and different with our friends, and with the support of the College! 
