Irvine Valley's women's sand volleyball team opens its 2014 season with a home match against San Bernardino Valley at 1 p.m. on Friday at Irvine Valley.
The Lasers won the Intercollegiate Sand Volleyball Conference State Championship last year.
IVC defeated Golden West, Fullerton and San Diego City in the ISVC tournament in 2013 at IVC.
The Lasers finished second to Golden West in the first year of the championship in 2012.
Irvine Valley returns a number of players from last year's team. Sophomores Annie Mitchem and Becky Moodie will make up the No. 1 team for Irvine Valley.
Freshmen Kobi Pekich and Marisa Doran will play as the No. 2 team and sophomores Haley Whyte and Emily Daily will be the No. 3 team for the Lasers.
Sophomores Katherine Kolodziej and Alexis Radecki will play No. 4 and freshmen Hailey Jones and Shaelyn Perez will make up the No. 5 team for IVC.
Nearly all of the players are out from the Irvine Valley women's indoor volleyball team which finished third in the state this past fall. The Lasers won the Orange Empire Conference and were ranked as high as No. 2 in the state.
Mitchem, a 6-2 middle blocker, was named the conference's Most Valuable Player, all-state and All-American and was picked as the two-year college national player of the year by the American Volleyball Coaches Association.
Jones, the team's setter, was named first team all-conference and all-region and Doran, an outside hitter, and Moodie, IVC's libero, were each selected first team all-conference for Irvine Valley.
Two Irvine Valley players from last year's sand team received scholarships to continue competing at four-year schools.
Allie Cook, part of Irvine Valley's top sand team last season and an all-conference and all-region indoor player at IVC, signed with and is competing at the University of Arizona this spring, and Alex Goodman, who was a member of IVC's No. 2 team and an all-conference indoor player for the Lasers, signed with Grand Canyon University.
This year's Irvine Valley team will follow up its match on Friday with a competition against two four-year schools at home on Saturday.
IVC is slated to take on UCLA and Cal State Bakersfield starting at 8 a.m.
