Ryan Zhu
When Josh Schellinger joined the Triton men’s volleyball roster in 2022, UC San Diego ended the season with a 13-11 record. He redshirted that year and watched from the sidelines as the Tritons barely eked out a winning season. In 2023, his first year competing as a Triton, the team struggled even more, ending the season 8-17. The next year, UCSD managed to put up a 12-15 record.
“Honestly, we didn’t have a lot of great wins [in 2023], and it was honestly the first time in my career where I’ve just been losing a lot,” Schellinger, who was a redshirt junior for the 2025 season, said. “It was really humbling, and to bounce back season after season and progressively get stronger — I feel like the culture just changed a ton, and it really got us to be a lot more committed and on the same page of this idea that we want to win and we know that we belong.”
Since then, an experienced roster and a new head coach, Brad Rostratter, have ushered in the team’s most successful Division-I season. This past season, UCSD compiled an 18-12 record, the most Division-I wins in program history.
This was a remarkable turnaround for a team that began the season as underdogs. In January, the 2025 Big West Men’s Volleyball Preseason Coaches’ Poll had ranked UCSD sixth — dead last in the conference.
The Tritons started the 2025 season with four home sweeps and remained undefeated through their first six games. They steadily climbed the ranks of the American Volleyball Coaches Association National Collegiate poll from No. 18 to No. 10 by the end of the season, plowing through the competition — including highly-ranked opponents like No. 4 UC Irvine and No. 8 Stanford — in their pursuit of a Big West title. They ended the season at No. 4 in the Big West, two slots up from the disappointing preseason prediction. In a conference where all but one team boasted a winning record this year, the Tritons’ record was a hard-fought accomplishment.
“When I saw those rankings, I was just really disappointed,” Schellinger said. “Being able to prove those people wrong and at least be ranked above two other teams is something I’m still proud of. It’s a testament to where UCSD has been in the past. We’re not a powerhouse of a program compared to other teams. But still, it’s something that I want people to expect UCSD to be a program to watch out for in the future.”
A large part of the team’s recent success can be attributed to a few standout athletes.
Senior opposite hitter Anthony Cherfan, who was named to the All-Big West First Team last season after transferring from Brigham Young University, continued dominating the court in his second year at UCSD. He led the Tritons in points and kills in both of his years at UCSD. He earned a second All-Big West First Team nod and was named to the AVCA All-America Second Team this season.
Graduate student setter Bryce Dvorak, who arrived at UCSD from Pepperdine via the transfer portal in 2025, joined Cherfan on the All-Big West First Team this year. He quickly made a name for himself as the conference leader in total assists. Dvorak, though, was indifferent to the accolades.
“It’s nice to get an award, I guess, but [it] doesn’t really matter to me all that much,” Dvorak said. “I’d prefer my team excel and win Big West. But I mean, yeah, it’s alright to get some recognition.”
Schellinger rounded out the trio with an All-Big West Honorable Mention. He scored 335 kills this past season, only 13 behind kill leader Cherfan, and hit a career-high 22 points in UCSD’s first round Big West Championship victory.
Having trained at UCSD for four years, Schellinger has witnessed the team’s growth firsthand. This season, he noticed a distinct change in the team’s mindset.
“We’re all here, and we all want to win really badly,” Schellinger said. “This is the first time that I’ve felt that from every single guy in the court. We’re competing to win, not just going through the motions. That was the mentality that we developed in these past two years that has made us into the program that we are now. It’s a testament to Brad to come in and be able to make a difference in our mentality in all of us and instill this winner attitude.”
That mentality propelled the Tritons all the way to the Big West Championship, where No. 4-seeded UCSD faced the No. 5-seeded UC Santa Barbara Gauchos in the first round. It was the third time the teams had clashed this season. UCSD won both previous matches, 3-1.
This time was different. With a ticket to the semifinals on the line, the Gauchos played with new intensity. The match stretched to five nail-biting sets.
“Knowing that this could be their last match definitely pushed [the Gauchos] to play a little bit better than they normally do, and we didn’t come as ready to play as they did,” Schellinger said. “[It was an] extremely scary and dramatic match but really rewarding, because that was the first time I’ve advanced to the second round of Big West playoffs in my whole four years here.”
Ultimately, though, the Tritons pulled ahead with a 15-13 final set victory to punch their ticket to the second round. They didn’t have much time to bask in the glory — the next day, UCSD faced top-seeded Long Beach State in the semifinals. The Beach had defeated the Tritons the week before in their last two matches of the regular season.
“When you have to go up against a top opponent as the underdog, you [have] to make something happen,” Schellinger said. “We were able to try to find some different looks in our prior two matches and find something a little bit different, trying to play aggressive. Trying to play loose, and then just see what happens. We definitely had some great stretches where we were playing really good volleyball. We just couldn’t string enough together.”
UCSD fell in straight sets.
The end of the Tritons’ 2025 season was almost equally heart-wrenching and triumphant. They had forged the most impressive record the school had seen in more than 20 years — and their season had come to a close in a brutal, familiar loss to the Beach, who went on to win the Big West title and NCAA Championship.
“We just played our hearts out at the end, and that was what I was happy about,” Schellinger said. “At the end of the day, it was some of the best volleyball I’ve seen at UCSD ever.”
The 2025 team had pulled UCSD all the way from years of losing records to the conference semifinals.
“It’s two very different things to be out there playing at the Division-I level, and then it’s a whole other thing to be out there and competing,” Dvorak said. “It’s tough because amongst the top teams, it’s just a few points of difference. It’s like the 80/20 rule, where that little 20% to be one of the top teams, one of the best teams, takes 80% more effort. All the younger guys were able to understand what it takes to compete at the Division-I level versus just being there and going through the motions. That was definitely a big wake up [call] or realization for a lot of the underclassmen.”
Dvorak, Schellinger, and Cherfan are three of the nine graduating athletes that will be absent from the men’s volleyball roster next year. Schellinger is heading to the Loyola University Chicago Ramblers to play volleyball and pursue his graduate degree. Dvorak hopes to play professionally after leaving UCSD. They leave behind a historic 2025 season.
“We really proved ourselves as potentially being in the conversation,” Dvorak said. “Some of the younger guys are going to be able to keep that going.”