Abbie Jackson (left) and Rachel Tullos (right) joined UH in 2019 with new head coach David Rehr. Since then, Houston volleyball has reached new heights, including 2 straight tournament appearances. | Oscar Herrera/The Cougar
On August 30, 2019, David Rehr made his debut as Houston’s head volleyball coach against Arizona State in front of a crowd of just 262 people in the Fertitta Center. The next day, in a doubleheader, the attendance was even smaller.
“We played in the morning and no one was there,” Rehr said. “But we played LSU (that night), and there was definitely more purple and yellow in the stands.”
Abbie Jackson and Rachel Tullos were just freshmen seeing their first collegiate action that night as they played in front of friends, family and not much else. The average attendance for a volleyball game at UH that year ended up just below 500 people, and the Cougars finished a middling 16-17.
Fast forward to this year, and Houston — fresh off of a historic 30-win campaign in 2022 — opened its season with a resounding win over No. 22 USC in front of a then-record 1,904 UH fans. That average attendance number for 2019 would fall far below the sparsest crowd in 2023, as the Cougars would surpass 1,000 in attendance four more times in 2023.
Things came to a rousing crescendo with back-to-back crowds of 7,000-plus when Houston took on No. 7 Texas in October, shattering the record for attendance at a UH women’s sporting event.
“Dave always says, ‘Can you even imagine where we are now?'” Jackson said. “Thinking back to our first year, it’s just been a complete flip-around.”
Jackson and Tullos have been there for all of it. They were there for the skeleton crowds in 2019. They were there for the COVID-scrambled 2020-21 season. They experienced the heartbreak of narrowly missing the NCAA Tournament in 2021 despite a 25-7 record.
They were critical pieces in 2022 when Houston ripped through the AAC with a 28-3 regular season and made the Tournament for the first time since 2000. The pair then helped lead UH to its first NCAA Tournament game in 28 years, crossing the 30-win mark for the first time in school history en route to a Sweet 16 appearance.
In the team’s first year in the Big 12, Jackson and Tullos helped the Cougars bounce back from a month-long road stretch and a 2-5 start to Big 12 play by winning nine of their last 11 games and earning a second-straight NCAA Tournament bid.
“We wouldn’t be successful in the Big 12 without them,” Rehr said. “We would be faltering and trying to find our way.”
However, both Jackson and Tullos had different reasons not to come to Houston at all but ended up with Rehr at UH because of one thing: trust.
Tullos, from Lantana, Texas, initially committed to play for Rehr at his previous gig at Arkansas State. Once Rehr took the job at Houston in March of 2019 however, Tullos did not hesitate to follow the coach that recruited her.
“Rachel trusted me enough that she was supposed to come with me at my old school,” Rehr said. “She changed her mind and came here, sight unseen, like that, just trusted me.”
For Tullos, it was a chance to be a part of something much bigger than herself.
“Coming here, I wanted to make this program something that it’s never been before,” Tullos said. “And I’m just glad to be a part of that and be part of Dave’s legacy.”
Jackson, on the other hand, had quite the opposite experience. A native of Gig Harbor, Washington, Jackson had committed to make the long trip south to play for Houston’s previous head coach, Kaddie Platt. But instead of jumping ship when a new regime came in, Jackson, much like Tullos, trusted in Rehr.
“When I chose Houston, I chose the school and I chose the program,” Jackson said. “I just put a lot of trust in (Rehr). I didn’t get recruited by him, but coming in and meeting him, you know, I was like, ‘I trust him.’“
Five years later, that trust has resulted in profound success at Houston as the pair have cemented themselves as two of the most prolific players in UH history.
Jackson led the Cougars in kills in three of her five seasons and, if this year’s tournament run lasts long enough, can potentially finish atop the school leaderboard in career attack attempts. Also, despite struggling with her serve early on in her career, Jackson owns the UH record for most career service aces.
Statistically, Tullos is the greatest middle blocker Houston has ever seen, owning the top spot in career total blocks and block assists by a comfortable margin while shattering the record for total and solo blocks as a freshman in 2019.
Sitting at a 102-43 record, Tullos and Jackson will finish one-two in career sets in program history, becoming the first UH players ever to surpass 500 sets played.
“They’re two different kinds of stories,” Rehr said. “But we are not where we are without Rachel and Abbie.”
Now with the NCAA Tournament ahead, Tullos and Jackson get to go on one last ride for the program they helped build. A program that Tullos says was built on buying into relentlessly working hard every day.
“There’s a lot of things that you have to do (to build a program), you really have to buy into the coaches, the program, the things they want to do,” Tullos said. “They’ve harped a lot on your hard work and your work ethic. And I feel like this team really has it.”
The Cougars, an 8-seed in this year’s tournament, will have a lot to play for come Friday in their first-round matchup against UC Santa Barbara. With a potential rematch with top-seeded Stanford, who knocked out UH in the Sweet 16 last season, and a chance to send its bedrock seniors off the right, Houston is giddy to make another run.
“They are huge cornerstones to this program,” said senior setter Annie Cooke. “It’s been fun getting to play with them and kind of grow with them. But I think it gives us a lot more of a motivation to go out there this year and just play for them.”
