On Nov. 17, the Riordan Basketball teams hosted a basketball contest in the gym to hype up the opening of the WCAL basketball season. 

Benny Willers ’08, Student Activities Director, summarized it saying, “Purple and Gold Madness is pretty much a rally for the basketball team. The goal of the event is to get the student body excited about the upcoming season and show them what it would look like to run a basketball team.”

Willers added, “This was an idea that we had honestly in the summer, but the idea was different. We wanted to do it at night and call it ‘Midnight Madness’ like in many colleges.” 

The staff wanted to emphasize the school culture following many challenging years at Riordan. 

“The goal of this isn’t just to get the students excited about the basketball season, but also school culture, school pride, and coming together as a community and have fun,” said Willers. 

After Purple & Gold Madness, the Varsity Boys Basketball Head Coach, Joseph Curtin ’01, reflected on the event, saying, “The event went well, it was really fun… the best event was the dunk contest for sure.” 

However, he believes that Riordan can experiment a bit more with the setting next year. “I think that maybe now that we’ve done it, we can promote it more. Also, we can switch it up, do it at night or maybe we can do it before a dance.”

In the end, multiple students and players mentioned the lack of promotion and hype, Georgia Haynes  ’25 said, “It was great… 7/10, they could have had more hype.”