Polisky Aims to Engineer Historic May for Stanford

Aliya Polisky saw a problem that needed solving.

Whenever she cranked free-position shots from the eight-meter arc, her bottom hand slipped off her lacrosse stick. As a product design major at one of the preeminent engineering universities in the United States, Polisky was uniquely positioned to do something about it.

She prototyped a grip for her stick in Stanford’s ME 127 Design for Additive Manufacturing course, spending hours in the Product Realization Lab comparing different materials, developing new CAD skills for handling organic shapes and utilizing advanced 3D printing.

“It was awesome to learn all of those technical skills that go into it,” Polisky said. “And then to also have it about lacrosse, two things I’m passionate about, I loved the project.”

The redshirt junior’s passions had come together once before — long before. It was in sixth grade, a year after she first joined an organized lacrosse team but well before she ever considered a career path in design. Some of Polisky’s missed shots would break the fence pickets in her Franklin, Tennessee backyard. Instead of getting angry, Polisky’s father, Will, taught her how to fix them. If she broke one, she replaced it herself. And with the broken pickets, she designed a wastebasket for her room.

“Being handy around the house, building and being creative — that’s always something I've been interested in,” Polisky said. “You can go back and look at what started it.”

Almost a decade later, Polisky is as comfortable in safety goggles as she is in lacrosse goggles. The design major is a standout attacker for the Cardinal. Last June, she was the team’s Academic All-District at-large representative and national finalist from College Sports Communicators for excellence on the field and in the classroom.

“They both bring me so much joy,” she said. “I want to be the best at both.”

Polisky has again positioned herself as one of the top attackers in the country, notching 44 goals and 26 assists a year after she set the program record with 65 goals. She interned at SpaceX last summer (while working out at USC) and is pursuing a patent and mass manufacturing for the stool seat attachment she designed for a freshman year project. She used the Stanford lab to design an exact-to-scale mini-barbell set, a hammer and toolbox and a space wrench. She will graduate in three years before spending her final year at Stanford pursuing a master’s degree in mechanical engineering.

Somewhere in there Polisky might get her pilot’s license. “A word for this year for me is expansive,” she said, “learning niche things and taking risks in the opportunity of learning.”

Polisky lists manual lathe, manual mill, sand casting, sheet-metal forming, riveting and welding among her manufacturing skills. Not every student in ME 127 finds a way to use the 3D printing in the 10-week course, but it served her well for her stick grip project. “I thought that was an appropriate and interesting use of the technology that we were talking about in class,” said Dan Somen, interim director of the Product Realization Lab. “She pulled it off well. The end result was clean and impressive.”

Polisky has developed CAD, software and data and design thinking skills. She’s proficient in sign language after studying under Cathy Haas, who famously taught Koko the gorilla sign language at the San Francisco Zoo.

Teammates have taken the class too.

“We use it on the field, which has been really fun to show what zones other teams are in or little things like that,” Polisky said. “We’re able to talk to each other, but silently.”

Now Polisky has designs on guiding Stanford to its first national championship. The Cardinal’s win total has climbed each year since she debuted, from 10 in 2023 to 13 in 2024 to 15 with a trip to the NCAA tournament’s second round in 2025. The Cardinal have 15 wins entering the first round of the NCAA tournament on Friday against Penn State.

The controversial and anticlimactic end to the season — Stanford lost at Florida in overtime on a ball that ricocheted off goalie Lucy Pearson and narrowly trickled past the goal line — only intensified that belief. The Cardinal return nine of 12 starters and their top seven scorers. They lost Maddigan Miller (to Clemson) but gained Mallory Hasselbeck (from Boston College) in the transfer portal.

“This is the year for us,” Polisky said. “We know the mountain that we have to climb. We're all up for the journey. We have so many weapons this year.”

A national title would be the latest trailblazing for the highly motivated Polisky. She was the first Tennessean to make a U.S. National Team when she played for the gold-medal winning U20 team in 2024. That came a little over a year after she was part of the first class of female athletes to enroll early at Stanford and believed to be the first female lacrosse player to ever do so anywhere. She strives to be on the first U.S. Olympic team in 2028.

Polisky has always been a go-getter. As soon as she committed to Stanford, she started to plan to graduate high school early. She arrived at The Farm at 17, mentored by a team she called “my 33 big sisters.”

Polisky flew home to attend the prom and graduation ceremony but missed out on her final high school season. She never looked at it as a sacrifice, valuing the chance to expand her skillset and lacrosse IQ, start her college experience sooner and get a jump on her education.

Last year she mentored Olivia Prosper — the Salt Lake City native who also enrolled early — as part of the lacrosse team’s Big Tree/Little Tree program. Stanford coach Danielle Spencer hasn’t shied away from bringing in athletic, smart players from non-traditional areas, just like her coach and mentor Kelly Amonte Hiller at Northwestern.

“It’s just given us that reassurance and that encouragement to keep recruiting players from those non-traditional areas,” Spencer said. “Aliya is a great example for those younger players of what they can accomplish if they love it and they work for it.”

Polisky arrived fit, fast (she’s her high school track team’s record holder in the 100 and 200 meters) and hungry to learn. Spencer said Polisky could have made an impact that spring but didn’t want to start her NCAA eligibility clock until the next year.She got plenty out of being on the scout team, practicing and training every day with the Cardinal.

“They’re very coachable because part of their nature is this hunger to learn, this growth mindset and this curiosity to become better in everything that they do,” Spencer said. “Aliya is one example of that across our team.”

As thrilled as Polisky is about her own growth, she gushes more giddily about her teammates’ achievements. Peep Williams interned at Nike and is president of the school’s Fellowship of Christian Athletes chapter. Olivia Rose worked at David Yurman and has designed two dresses that have been on a runway. Kate Bellissimo will work at SoFi. Annabel Frist has interned at CLEAR and Adobe. Polisky is convinced MJ Magnano will be president someday — her political science advisor is Condoleezza Rice. Magnano and teammate Sawyer Billings teach a public speaking class that Polisky is taking because good communication is so important to engineering and athletics.

“Being good academically is helping us be good at lacrosse,” Polisky said. “And being good at lacrosse is helping us be good academically.”

Polisky would do anything to support her teammates. She laser-engraved personalized emblems for each of her teammates in the lab last year. This year, she fashioned a calendar counting down the days until the first game with a different teammate featured each day. Teammates bring her e-bikes to assemble to get around the spacious Palo Alto campus.

“My favorite thing to do is gift give, like give someone something they really want or need,” Polisky said. “The reason why I love designing for people is that moment when you give them your product and they get that aha moment in their eye or you solved a problem in their life.”

It’s Stanford that has filled a need for Polisky. She wanted a blend in a college, and she’s found it in a mix of classes and lacrosse that inspire and drive her.

“I'm being pushed at the highest level, like we're competing for a national championship,” Polisky said. “And then in design, I'm being pushed by some of the best professors and best students who are doing the most incredible things.”

In sport and in design, Polisky’s instinct is the same: See a problem, build a solution and aim higher than before.