LA MIRADA, Calif. --- Saturday morning marks the beginning of the 48^th season of Biola Volleyball. Head Coach Aaron Seltzer begins his 15^th year at the helm and looks to add a bunch to his program-best 378 coaching wins.
 
The Eagles come into the 2016 season following a 30-4 campaign in 2015 that came to a bitter end in the national quarterfinals when Biola lost a grueling five-set match to the eventual national champions, Columbia (Mo.).
 
Biola begins its new campaign with a No. 5 ranking in the postseason release of the 2015 NAIA Top-25 Coaches' Poll. The Eagles will likely remain inside of the top-25 when the 2016 preseason poll is released on Aug. 16.
 
The Eagles open the season at home for the fifth season in a row. Seltzer's squad has won three of those previous four season-openers and won 15 matches in a row to open 2015. Biola Volleyball has not lost at home since it met Concordia inside of Chase Gym back in September 2014. The team comes into 2016 riding a 21-match home winning streak.
 
Biola's team looks a whole lot different in 2016 than it did in 2015. Seltzer's squad features just eight players that were on the 2015 roster and only two players (Tess Van Grouw, Olivia Sorensen) were on the team in 2014.
 
After the season concluded in 2015 the Eagles graduated four players that achieved NAIA All-American status and also lost their starting libero, who is now on the coaching staff. However, Seltzer has scoured the country to find the right mix of players to retool and has accomplished that with his incoming class of 10 new recruits.
 
Those 10 new players are evenly split at five freshmen and five transfer students. Outside Hitter Brooke Watts and Defensive Specialist Anna Houser figure to highlight a deep freshman class and Sierra Bauder (Western Illinois) should be one of the impact players among the transfer class.
 
Seltzer did not shy away from building a competitive schedule for this upcoming season. He loaded the Eagles' preseason with tough matches against top-flight national competition in order to prepare the team well for its last run at a Golden State Athletic Conference title.
 
The Eagles begin play on Aug. 13 with their first-ever matchup against second-year program Providence Christian in a 10:00 a.m. home opener. Then the team begins a stretch where it will face nine opponents that are either ranked or receiving votes, and just three unranked opponents, before it opens conference play on the road on Sept. 6.
 
The key date on the preseason calendar is Aug. 27 when the Eagles go toe-to-toe with the reigning national champion Cougars in the Hastings College Tournament.
 
The first home conference game takes place at 7:00 p.m. on Sept. 16 when the Eagles host Menlo College. Key conference home matches include those against Vanguard and Westmont on Oct. 4 and Oct. 25, respectively.
 
Every 2016 home match will be streamed live at portal.stretchinternet.com/biola/ with play-by-play commentary provided by Josh Banker.
 
For up-to-the-minute information on the 2016 season follow our Twitter and Instagram feeds at @BiolaAthletics.