Does Size REALLY Matter – End of Season Recap

As the men’s U SPORTS season got underway back in the fall, I did my first article on the heights of teams, asking the question does height affect the success of the team. I used the first week of results and ranked the teams based on winning and losing. Give the first article a read to catch up! After some fruitful discussion I was asked if I could do the same thing at the end of the season. 

For my analysis, I only included the teams that qualified for the U Sports Championship and only the starting line ups for the first quarterfinal match.

My method:

1. I looked at the starting line up for each U Sports team in their first match only of the 2022 U SPORTS National Championship on Friday, March 25th, 2022. I didn’t take into account injuries or potentially those who would normally start.
2. I divided teams in to setter, middles, and outside hitters. Sorry liberos you aren’t included in my analysis.
3. I took heights from the official documents submitted to U SPORTS (I know they may not be exactly accurate, but it’s what we have).
4. No one was listed under 6’0 and no one was listed over 7’0. So the numbers you see are the inches over 6 feet. Ie 5 is 6’5.

Our study is anything but scientific, and probably has a probability of error of around 100%, but still think it’s fun to look at it!

Now the data,

Trinity Western had the tallest setter at 6’7.

Queen’s had the tallest middles at 6’8.5.

Trinity Western had the tallest outside hitters at 6’6.7

Looking at the two teams that were in the final, Alberta and Trinity Western. They had the two tallest starting lineups. However third place went to Sherbrooke and they had the smallest team in the championship. Perhaps this can be attributed to experience as Sherbrooke had the oldest team of starters on their roster.

As we move in to the other teams, it does not seem there is any correlation, however we must keep in mind that this is a sample size of 8 teams and one tournament. Perhaps there are other things at play that are more important to the success of the team at nationals such as strength of conference, or a small disruption in the middle of the season keeping some conferences from training for a month!

I think our numbers would be validated more with multiple years of data and looking at other data points as well. What do you think? Leave me some comments!