Author Arthur G. Lewis once wrote, “It’s not about the size of the dog in the fight, but the size of the fight in the dog.”

Sports are littered with success stories of undersized individuals. Less common is the story, and triumph, of an undersized team.

Yet, the Quinnipiac Bobcats volleyball team just clinched another ticket to the MAAC Tournament.

It comes as no shock.

Since their 2022 conference title, they have lost just nine games against MAAC competition, been to the championship game twice and won two MAAC Player of the Year awards, in 2023 with senior outside hitter Ginevra Giovagnoni and in 2024 with graduate opposite Elena Giacomini. The list goes on, but the point is that Quinnipiac has solidified itself as a prime contender within the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference.

It has accomplished all of that as one of the shortest teams in the conference.

It’s not that height is all that matters in volleyball, but it certainly helps. At its core, it is a sport revolving around attempts at keeping the ball up and putting it down. Starting with height means your max vertical reach on a jump is at a higher point, it becomes harder to put the ball over your head and it becomes a whole lot easier to create offense of your own.

The Bobcats need no such advantage. In 2025, they average out to the fourth shortest team in the MAAC, with a mean height of 69.93 inches, or a tad over 5-foot-8.

The tallest player in the conference is Emily Sawyer, a middle blocker for Sacred Heart University, who is listed at 6-foot-6. The Bobcats were more than able to shut her down, limiting her to just nine kills across seven sets in two matchups.

After the second meeting between the Pioneers and Bobcats, Quinnipiac senior middle blocker Milena Silva spoke about what it took to stop Sawyer.

“It’s more about me adjusting than about her,” Silva said. “It’s more about us, not the tallest player in the MAAC.”

Of course, being the taller team doesn’t have a one-on-one correlation with winning volleyball games. Manhattan, which has gotten comfortable in the cellar of the MAAC standings, is tied for second with an average height of 71.90 inches. Meanwhile, Fairfield, the two-time reigning champion of the conference, is not in the upper half of average height.

Let’s take a moment to compare just the starters of Quinnipiac and Fairfield, as determined by most sets played, as shown in the illustration below.

The discrepancy between the two becomes quite evident, with the only Bobcat outright taller than their Stag counterpart being junior outside Leilani-kai Giusta. Of course, when the Stags visited Hamden, the Bobcats overcame, as they always do.

Quinnipiac swept Fairfield off its homecourt, avenging a loss from earlier in the season. After the game, Quinnipiac’s head coach Kyle Robinson talked about the inherent height difference of the teams.

“There’s just some things I don’t worry about when I coach,” Robinson said. “If a girl hits a ball a foot over one of our athletes, that’s life.”

They are the shortest front row in the conference, when averaging a team’s middle blockers, outside and opposite hitters. The Bobcats come out to a height of 70.91 inches in the front, with every other team operating above 71 inches.

That’s part of the reason the Bobcats rank second-to-last in both blocks per set (1.55) and blocks allowed per set (2.86).

“We try to make up for it in other areas, we try to neutralize that by serving well,” Robinson said.

To Robinson’s credit, the team has done just that. The Bobcats rank first among MAAC teams with service aces per set with 1.82. On the flip side, they only allow 1.31 against them, the second-best mark in the conference.

It’s more than just that, though; Robinson has fostered a culture in Hamden obsessed with winning and connectedness.

“Anyone who gives to the game and anyone that I am connected to, that I’ve coached, they’re everything to me,” he said.

Two of those former athletes who are “everything” to Robinson include outsider hitter/opposite Aryanah Diaz ‘23 and opposite Alexandra Tennon ‘24. The pair appeared in the stands of Burt Kahn Court on consecutive days in October.

Diaz and Tennon were both a part of that 2022 Championship team. They stand at 5-foot-4 and 5-foot-8, respectively, but totaled 1,068 and 620 kills over their careers with the Bobcats.

“I love that they stop in. That’s part of the legacy we’ve been talking about,” Robinson said. “Like the old Quinnipiac volleyball, we dumpster fired that thing, right? We let it burn down, and we’ve been rebuilding this thing from the ashes. And part of that rebuild is having a love for this place.”

Perhaps it is that love of Hamden that has seen the Bobcats lose just three games at home in the past three seasons.

You can’t teach height, sure, but the other side of that coin is that you can’t teach heart, something the Bobcats have been second to none.