The University of Houston volleyball program continued to succeed under Head Coach David Rehr in its first season in a new conference. Behind a 19-10 record, including a 11-7 mark in Big 12 Conference play, powered the team to its second consecutive NCAA Tournament berth and second straight appearance in the NCAA Tournament Second Round.
The team hit the ground running to start the new season, downing #22 USC in four sets in front of a then-record 1,904 fans at Fertitta Center. After defeating Southern Miss. and McNeese to close the Flo Hyman Classic, the Cougars received their highest ranking in team history at #13 from the AVCA. Ultimately, the team would be ranked in every poll of the year for the first time ever.
The team fought through adversity in non-conference play, dropping tough matches to Texas State and #19 Kentucky before rallying for its first win against Texas A&M since 1994, snapping an 11-match losing streak to the Aggies on Sept. 13.
Houston faced a gauntlet to kick off its inaugural Big 12 league slate, facing #10 BYU and twice #19 Kansas on the road as its conference openers. The Cougars snapped the three-match skid in its home Big 12 opener, sweeping West Virginia for its first league win on Oct. 6, then earning the school’s first winning streak in league play by sweeping the Mountaineers again the next day.
Announcing a pair of sellouts for the first time in program history, the Cougars broke Houston’s record for attendance at a women’s sporting event as 7,054 packed into Fertitta Center on Oct. 14 to see the team battle #7, and eventual national champions, Texas.
Houston received national attention during the campaign as well, with three matches (BYU, Texas, Cincinnati) getting picked up to broadcast on ESPN’s linear suite of channels. In total, across the trio of matches that aired on ESPN, ESPN2 and ESPNU, Houston had 417,000 viewers on average watch the team on national television during the year.
The Cougars tallied nine sweeps in conference, including a streak of four straight, to finish the year with an 11-7 record in league play, sealing a fourth-place finish in the team’s inaugural season. The record and resume, which included cornerstone wins against Texas A&M, SMU, TCU and Kansas State, landed Houston an eight-seed in the NCAA Tournament, clinching the team’s second consecutive postseason appearance as the team was sent to a familiar site in Stanford, Calif.
After dispatching UC Santa Barbara in the first round, 3-1, Houston took #2 and one-seed Stanford to the brink, rallying from an 0-2 deficit to force a fifth set. Stanford would ultimately go on to win the decisive fifth, ending the Cougars’ season.
Kate Georgiades repeated for the third year as conference Libero of the Year, earning Houston’s first Positional Player of the Year honors from the Big 12. The Cougars also placed three on the All-Big 12 Conference teams, with Georgiades and Kenna Sauer earning First Team selections and Abbie Jackson being voted to the Second Team.
Sauer earned Houston’s first AVCA non-Honorable Mention All-America honor, receiving Third Team accolades from the coaches association, while Georgiades received All-America Honorable Mention recognition. VolleyballMag.com flipped the two in its list of All-Americans, giving Georgiades Third Team honors and Sauer Honorable Mention accolades. The pair, along with Abbie Jackson, were also chosen as AVCA All-Region honorees.