During the successful 2015 campaign, the El Camino men’s volleyball team would struggle and overcome tough matches, only to drop the final state championship match against Santa Monica College.

This season the team looks to build a foundation to continue the success after last year’s 18-4 record and second-place conference finish.

“There’s no Casey (Wood, former captain) and no Chris (Griebenow, former captain),” coach Dick Blount said. “But we have more depth. We’ll be dressing 20, we have four setter, so two of them will red shirt and 16 people will be mad every game.”

The team also loses former libero Allen Sarinana, and freshman standout Cesar Medina this season, but Blount isn’t worried.

“Kurt (Peters, assistant coach) and I need to have patience,” he said. “We hope to do better, we got second in the conference last year, and we lost to a good team who earned it.”

Peters said that with the depth, there’s no certain starting squad for the season, as of now.

“There are a lot of familiar faces,” he said. “We have guys from last year and even the year before. We (want guys) to contribute and compete at the highest level. At this moment we have three or four line ups we can use and hopefully by conference, one setter takes over.”

Sophomore middle blocker Peter Nordel, who played in last year’s line up returns this year as one of three captains, and says that the four setters all have a “unique style.”

“The guys are all really talented,” he said. “They all have one or two things to work on.”

The men in blue and white will take to the court and begin the 2016 season at Irvine Valley College on Feb. 5 at 12 p.m.