Junior setter Lily Bolen and junior outside hitter Aspen Maxwell will be the Rutgers representatives at the 2026 Big Ten Volleyball Media Day on Monday, Aug. 3, in Chicago.
The Scarlet Knights will be part of a 36-player group at the fifth annual event, which serves as a preview for the 2026 season.
Bolen was the engine of Rutgers’ offense in 2025. As the team’s starting setter, she finished with 1,068 assists and 9.54 assists per set, both team highs.
That assists-per-set mark was the best by a Scarlet Knight since 2012, and her 9.00 assists per set in Big Ten play stood as the highest by a Rutgers player in a conference season. She also put together 11 double-doubles, the fourth-most in a single season in the rally era.
Her biggest numbers came in a few standout performances. Bolen posted a career-high 55 assists against Ohio State on Nov. 9, the most by a Scarlet Knight in a five-set match in 2025.
She also had 20 assists and 10 digs at No. 17 USC, and matched a career best with three blocks against Maryland on Oct. 3 and UCLA on Nov.
- Entering the 2026 season, she sits third in Rutgers rally-era career assists per set at 6.66, fourth in assists with 1,351 and ninth in aces with 69.
Maxwell made an immediate impact in her first season “On The Banks” after transferring from Missouri. She led Rutgers with 378 kills, 3.38 kills per set, 83 blocks and 450.0 total points. Those numbers all carried real weight in the record book: her kills-per-set average was the best by a Scarlet Knight since 2009, her kill total was the highest since 2013, and her 450.0 points were the second-most in a season in the rally era, just three points short of the record.
She also delivered in key moments throughout the year. Maxwell had 20 matches with double-figure digs and produced a career-high 21 kills at Buffalo, the most in a five-set match last season.
She added 16 kills in a sweep of Dartmouth, the most in a three-set match last year. Her tournament work stood out, too: she earned Sacred Heart Invite MVP honors after averaging 4.20 kills per set with a .363 hitting percentage, plus seven aces, 1.60 digs per set and eight blocks in wins over Dartmouth, Sacred Heart and LIU.
She was also named to the Buffalo Invite All-Tournament Team after averaging 3.93 kills and adding nine blocks across 14 sets against Marist, Liberty and Buffalo.
Rutgers heads into the new season with momentum built from several milestones in 2025. The Scarlet Knights passed their previous year’s win total just nine matches into the season, helped by a seven-match winning streak, the program’s longest since 2012. Six of those seven wins were sweeps.
Against Saint Francis (PA), Rutgers hit .456, the best mark in a rally-era match for the program. In nonconference play, the Scarlet Knights went 9-3 with seven sweeps and finished 4-0 at home.
Big Ten play brought more history, including a school attendance record and an 8,000-fan crowd at Jersey Mike’s Arena for the matchup with No. 1 Nebraska, the largest volleyball audience ever in New Jersey.
Rutgers also earned its first Big Ten win over Ohio State, and the sweep was the program’s most since 2000 and the first time in either Big East or Big Ten play that the Scarlet Knights held an opponent under 20 points in a match.
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Rutgers landed a major boost on the recruiting trail with Aiden Gibson, a four-star running back from Woodruff, S.C., giving Greg Schianos program a name that immediately changes the conversation around the backfield. Gibson had been one of the more coveted backs in the country, and his decision gives the Scarlet Knights a high-end talent at a position that can reshape an offense if the development hits.
Even more notable for Rutgers is the timeline. Gibson has reclassified from the 2027 class to 2026, which means he is moving up his arrival and planning to enroll early so he can join the team for preseason as a true freshman. For a program looking to stack wins on the field with wins in recruiting, this is the kind of addition that can matter well beyond one signing day. [Read more 🡒]
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The bigger note for Rutgers is the company it now keeps. Since 2014, only two other Big Ten programs have had both a running back and a wide receiver land on Athlons preseason first team in the same year, which tells you how rare this kind of recognition is. For a program still trying to turn consistency into status, it is a sign that the league is starting to view Rutgers as more than just a team with a few promising pieces. [Read more 🡒]
Rutgers Just Set Another Standard Fans Can Be Proud Of
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The honor carries a high bar, requiring at least a 3.70 GPA along with prior Academic All-Big Ten recognition, and 30 Scarlet Knights even posted perfect 4.0 GPAs over the previous academic year. It also extends a run of six straight years with more than 125 honorees, another marker that Rutgers can point to as it continues building its identity beyond competition. [Read more 🡒]