Short Stack, Lil’ Bit, and, yes, even Mighty Mouse – Hilary Mauro has heard ‘em all.

The Gym Dogs’ pint-sized powerhouse stands at just 4-foot-8, but her gymnastics, and her heart, are much, much bigger.

“She’s got the biggest heart of anyone I’ve ever coached,” coach Suzanne Yoculan said. “She’s got a big everything. A big heart, lots of confidence, great self-esteem. She’s just small in stature.”

Mauro is now a sophomore on the four-time defending champion Gym Dogs squad, and, despite not getting any taller, is growing into her role as a team player.

A native of Boston, Mass., Mauro earned Second-Team All-America honors last year, and now provides the Gym Dogs with solid performances on vault, beam and floor week in and week out.

She’s grown more confident and comfortable in playing her part and providing solid scores (she averages between 9.8 and 9.85 on each event) for her team. But, when it comes to her size, things weren’t always so easy.

“Sometimes it’s challenging,” Mauro said. “They need to alter all of my clothes, which gets annoying. But I guess I’ve grown to be more confident with it . In high school I remember I hated it. I always thought people were staring at me when they were walking by.”

Mauro’s journey to Athens was a long one, filled with doubt – her mother, a club gymnastics coach, actually didn’t want her to compete, and a lack of confidence or personal belief almost stopped her from coming to Athens.

“My mom was a coach, but she actually did not want me to do gymnastics,” Mauro said. “Both my brother and my sister had tried and weren’t very successful. But I would go to the gym with her while she would teach and just sit there and watch. And then I would kind of start doing stuff on my own to the point where she had to put me in the gym.”

Once her gymnastics career was firmly underway, Mauro and her family moved to Cincinnati in order to allow her to train under Mary Lee Tracy, a former Olympic coach who also mentored Georgia greats Kelsey Erickson and Karin and Kristi Lichey, among others.

It was Tracy who convinced her miniscule mentee to give Athens and Georgia gymnastics a try.

“Actually, Georgia wasn’t one of my top choices . I didn’t think I was good enough,” Mauro said. “So [Tracy] had to just keep convincing me, you’re good enough to go there, just go check it out, see what it’s like. So I listened to her . and ended up loving the coaches and just knew that everything was right for me. The team, the atmosphere, they’re just perfect.”

Yoculan calls Mauro “the most even-keeled athlete” on Georgia’s squad, and praises her work ethic and dedication despite her knowing that she’s only in the vault lineup until “we get bigger, further, better vaults [there].”

Mauro’s diminutive size is a disadvantage on vault, an apparatus that rewards strong, powerful athletes. But is an advantage on other
events?

“Being short can be an advantage, but only to a certain extent,” Mauro said. “I think being a little bit taller could help me out in the
prettiness of my gymnastics, I guess you could say . But it is also an advantage, being able to run as far as you want on floor and stay in
bounds and swinging in between the bars, stuff like that.”

Said senior Courtney Kupets: “She’s just a petite little girl, but she has as big of gymnastics as any of us.”

So, while small in stature, Hilary Mauro is big in heart, large in competitive drive, and huge in dedication. Both on the floor and off,
Mauro has grown, if not in size, as a gymnast and a person.

“We’ve got all kinds of little nicknames for her, and she’s like, ‘I don’t like that, I don’t like that, I don’t like that,’” Yoculan said. “But she is who she is, and I want her to be proud of it. Because she has tons to be proud of. That is one awesome kid right there.”