Ali Riley Position: Undergraduate Assistant Coach Experience: First Season

Feature Story

Ali Riley, the reigning Oceania Player of the Year and a World Cup and Olympic veteran, joins the Stanford staff after starring as an outside back for Stanford's 2008 and `09 NCAA College Cup teams.

Riley was named Women's Professional Soccer's Rookie of the Year in 2010 for her role in helping the FC Gold Pride to the league title. She has played for the New Zealand national team in the 2007 Women's World Cup and 2008 Beijing Olympics. She is a three-time New Zealand Player of the Year.

Riley, a native of Pacific Palisades, Calif., began her Stanford career in 2006 as a forward, but switched for her junior year to an overlapping position as a left outside back. She was an NSCAA third-team All-America, first-team All-Pac-10 and was the conference's Scholar Athlete Award winner for women's soccer, before being picked as the No. 10 overall selection in the WPS Draft.