PAUL CASEY
News Assistant
With the basketball season right around the corner, the Student Programming Board is gearing up for its annual season kick-off event, Blue and Orange Madness, being held Oct. 12 at 7 p.m. in Firestone Fieldhouse.
The Board is working hard to ensure that the event is not a repeat of last year’s Midnight Entourage, which was widely regarded as a disappointment by students who attended.
“The supervision of Midnight Entourage kind of lacked,” said senior Tiffany Saulnier, the Board’s Public Relations and Administrative Chair. “It just fell short of the expectations for Midnight Madness in years past. [This year] the athletics department definitely wants to have more of a say in the entire program.”
This year’s event officially starts with the opening of the Madness Village outside of the Fieldhouse. Students and members of the community will be able to walk around and enjoy Velcro and rock climbing walls, sports simulation games, a band and BMX performers. The Village will also have food provided by In-N-Out, Howdy’s, Dominoes and Sprinkles Cupcakes.
“It’s a really big village this year,” junior Special Events Chair Elizabeth Abend said. “It’s probably one of the biggest ones that they’ve had, at least since I’ve been here.”
The doors to the fieldhouse open at 8 p.m. with the main event starting at 8:45 p.m. The night from that point on is broken down into four quarters of various events, performances and giveaways.
One of the bigger and more anticipated components of the main event is a team scrimmage by the men’s basketball team, which allows them to show off their skills to the public for the first time since the end of last season.
“The team has been practicing since school began,” men’s basketball head coach Vance Walberg said, “It’s good for them to get out and play in front of people and get people excited about Pepperdine basketball.”
Excitement was something that many students thought was inexcusably absent from last year’s event as poor planning and bad execution slowed down the flow of what was supposed to be a hype-garnering night.
“Large amounts of people left before it was over,” senior Austin Maness said. “It didn’t work. It was terrible.”
This year’s Board has worked hard to avoid and eliminate the problems that plagued the event last year.
“We’ve made it more focused on spirit and taken out the skits and stuff that caused the downtime last year,” Abend said.
The Board also promises the main event will include a lot of new surprises and, according to the calendar online, “possible celebrity appearances.”
“We’re just doing it the way it’s supposed to be done,” Royston said. “We’ve been working really hard to make it an event that students enjoy.”
The event is scheduled to wrap up around 10 p.m., with a screening of “Space Jam” following at 10:15 in Elkins Auditorium to keep the night’s theme of basketball and fun going.
10-04-2007
