A new year has arrived for Vanguard men's volleyball, as the Lions start their season just days after the calendar flipped into 2026.  The new semester marks the second spin through the Mountain Pacific Sports Federation after the Lions stapled an 8-18 overall mark and a 2-10 league performance to their inaugural adventure.  The awe of playing some of the top teams in the NCAA and going to storied gyms has now passed; this is the new normal, not a one-off special.  The Lion logo could be splashed across screens at the Galen Center or Pauley Pavilion for the foreseeable future, and if all went well, it could appear on an NCAA bracket.  And that is a goal.
 
Head Coach Brian Rofer knows he has one of the hardest tasks on campus, taking his roster and shaping it to compete against Division I foes.  Nothing like having some of the tallest and most skilled players in the country at the nearby schools to test yourself against.  Yet the skipper expressed optimism at the MPSF media day that there are encouraging horizons sailing into sight.  Vanguard returns five players who started in 2025 and added talent at all positions, including one of the best players from the NAIA.  Coach Rofer knows that there is still a ton of work to do to put VU on par with any of the top teams in the NCAA, but his desire to take the team to the top burns brighter than ever.
 
"People say, 'you've got to be realistic about it', but in the back of my head, the goal is always to win a national championship no matter what level we are at," said Coach Rofer.  "Win, losses, hopes and dreams, they are out there, but we really want to see the guys succeed, and we would love to see both things happen at the same time.  Great development on and off the court."
 
The lineup will bring that fight to the Freed Center every night, and a lot of that begins with one of the best players from the MPSF last season.
 
Micah Sybesma should have gotten at least an Honorable Mention All-MPSF nod, but was overlooked despite hitting .428, good for fourth in the league.  The middle blocker completed his campaign with 219 kills to finish second on the team, and his 12-0-17 performance at home vs Stanford (.706) was tied for the fourth-best hitting percentage for an individual for a game of any length during the season.  He led Vanguard with 297 points, due to an MPSF-high of 16 solo blocks (22nd nationally), the fifth-most block assists (78, tied-20th nationally), and the fourth-most total blocks (94, 20th nationally), though his block per set rate of 0.98 had him ninth in the MPSF.  Not satisfied with being one of the best blockers, Sybesma also slammed a team-high 23 aces and pocketed 49 digs.  He will be on the radar for all the teams in the league this season, and a big reason why Vanguard is going to be competitive every match day. 
 
On the pin, Logan Freemon has been given big expectations by his head coach.  "He was kind of thrown into the firestorm last year as a freshman.  And what he's done this past fall has been very impressive.  I have been doing this for a long time and his trajectory is probably as good anyone else I've coached.  And that's a long list of very, very good athletes," relayed Coach Rofer.
 
Freemon paced the Lions with 240 kills and hit .198 in 2025, recording 14 games with 10 or more kills.  His best game percentage-wise was his opening night act against Merrimack, when he had 12 kills and two errors on 17 swings, while his 19 strikes against CUI and Jessup set his career-high in his debut season.  He pocketed 21 aces, landing three in games against Simpson and Menlo as his best from behind the line.  On defense, Freemon netted 122 digs and contributed 33 block assists and one solo stop, with 10 digs against UC Merced being his best showing.  Freemon has been deemed a pillar for this Vanguard side, and improvement by him bolsters VU's cause in the search for a top-eight placing in the MPSF. 
 
But Freemon has some competition at his position, not only from Sybesma, who may see some rotations on the outside, but from a grade-A transfer in Cole Oliver.  Oliver could become the next Nolan Flexen, a talented outside from The Master's to make a mark at the DI level.  Flexen went from pushing VU in the NAIA Tournament at TMU to starting at UC Irvine, and even played at the USA National Team scrimmage inside the Freed Center this past summer. 

So how does Oliver measure to that?  He was an NAIA First Team All-American at Hope International last season, along with being named an All-Golden State Athletic Conference player and an AVCA First Team All-American.  Oliver led the NAIA in kills per set at 4.51 while hitting .327, ending fifth in the NAIA in total kills (370), which was at the top of the GSAC.  He threw down 65 aces, leading the NAIA with a 0.71 aces per set mark.  He set plenty of records at HIU, including aces in a single season and in a single game, when he leveled seven against Olivet Nazarene to open his 2025 season.  Defensively, Oliver made 119 digs and tallied 511 receptions for a .959 receiving rate.  He made five solo blocks and helped out on 27 blocks for 489.5 total points at HIU.  Now, like Flexen, he has to replicate those numbers at the highest level in collegiate volleyball, but he has the poise to do just that.
 
Grant Dvorak holds an interesting spot on the VU roster, for while listed as a setter on the roster, he pounded down 178 kills to end third on the squad in 2025 as an outside hitter.  With a .201 attack percentage on 412 swings, Dvorak rarely worked as a true setter, though he pocketed 22 assists during the season.  He averaged 1.63 kills per set and had 20 kills twice last spring in matches against UC San Diego at home and the second home contest against Menlo.  He tallied 15 aces while diving for 80 digs to end fourth on the team, with his best being 11 digs in that same Menlo match.  The next few games will show what position he holds down, or if it will shift across the formation as the campaign moves along. 
 
With Sean Nguyen now an assistant coach on the bench, Brock Henderson is the provisional main passer for the Blue and Gold.  He contributed 463 assists in 2025, good for a 6.71 per set rate, which equated to a team hitting percentage of .245.  His best day came in the first game on the road at CUI, when he registered 45 helpers.  With 14 aces on the season, the setter slid in five alone against Olivet Nazarene at home, and he stacked on 35 kills when teams were not ready for the dump.  Defensively, Henderson stood tall for two solo blocks,  27 block assists, and 62 digs.  He had season-highs of four block assists (twice) and eight digs (twice).
 
Speaking of digs, Jacob Bayston returns to the VU wagon in 2026 after starting as the main libero in the first season of DI volleyball at Vanguard.  The transfer from OCC was steady despite facing some of the fastest hitters and servers in the country, posting a reception rate of .935 and finishing fifth in the MPSF with 1.83 digs per set.  With 174 digs in total, Bayston had one game of 10 digs and three with his season high of 13, including both games at home against Menlo.  He chipped in 30 assists when playing out of system and has the lead job again entering the 2026 gate.
 
But there are always those waiting in line for their moment to emerge, and the rest of the VU group is peppered with budding players.  Caleb Peters, Logan Finley, and Peter Albert all had moments in the sun last spring, with Finley striking for 82 kills while hitting .199 in 16 matches.  He poured his best on the Jessup Warriors in a five-setter at JU, when he put down 16 kills and 13 digs for the first double-double of his career.  Albert had 18 kills in eight contests, with eight at Jessup and at CUI (in the first game of those back-to-back series) being his best.  Peters worked as the No. 3 setter in the lineup and had 43 helpers in the first game at JU, his best of the year, with his 26 against UC Merced coming second.  He had 14 digs in that Jessup game for a double-double and helped make four stops at the net as well.
 
Braddock Duckworth and Gabriel Repplinger each played a handful of volleys, with Duckworth grabbing nine kills and Repplinger three.  Beyond those two are Caleb Malek, Jenson Wright, Poukihi Awai, Lucas Klein, Cullen Olson, Jaden Son, and Colin Such, who were all on the roster last year but did not see the floor.  That group has been working the bellows to see what they can do to get in the rotation in the new season.
 
As the returners grapple for playing time, the transfer train also delivered two new names beyond Oliver who can push the starters for their roles.  Willy Wang is an accomplished setter from Long Beach City College who helped orchestrate a run into the state quarterfinals.  On the attack, Wang led the conference with 29 aces and dished out 491 assists for a rate of 8.61 per set.  While on guard, he made six solo blocks and nabbed four helpers while snagging 83 digs (1.46 per set), which helped the Vikings to a 15-8 record.  The other transfer is Grant Veldman, who comes from Carthage College.  With all-conference laurels and state awards in Illinois, he posted 50 kills in short stints in 2023 and 2024 at Carthage, but did not feature last spring.
 
Two freshmen join the VU corps, as Matthew Pimentel and Koa Laboy establish their collegiate experience this year, though Coach Rofer expressed that each has some labor ahead of them to be prepared for the level of play that awaits them.
 
The Lions start the season with a pair of contests against foes from Missouri, as Rockhurst and Lindenwood come to the Freed Center.  But MPSF action gets going after that, as the Trojans of USC arrive on January 15.  The schedule for Vanguard is heavy with top-end teams, including reigning national champions Long Beach State.  Seven of the top 10 teams in the preseason AVCA coaches' poll are on the docket for VU, with the other six being UCLA, USC, Pepperdine, UCI, BYU, and UCSD.  Other quality foes include Springfield, which topped the DIII AVCA poll, and the NAIA champions, The Master's, who VU plays back-to-back in February.  To say the team will be battled-tested is an understatement. 
 
Yet by mid-April, VU just needs to be one of the top eight teams in the MPSF to make the Conference Tournament at BYU, which runs April 22-25.  Two teams will be left at home this year, as the additions of UC Merced and Jessup to the league mean that not everybody will qualify for the dance.  But in that spirit of "any given Sunday", the Lions just have to make it Provo.  It might be an insane task, looking for the Lions to beat national champion candidates, but rebellions are built on hope.
 
"I think just playing well against teams when we take those trips to Northern California or the Central Valley, we have to beat those teams.  We can't have any let downs against the teams that are potentially the ninth and 10th teams in the conference....then, you know, we hopefully get a few upsets against teams that are supposed to beat us.  And that's not out of the realm of possibility for us to do."

"And it's a tournament.  You never know."
 
 Time to upset the order.  Year two of MPSF volleyball for VU begins now.