Ali is a freshman forward from Pacific Palisades, Calif. who is considering a Biology or Psychology major at Stanford. In just her third game in a Cardinal uniform, Ali scored the game-winner in a 1-0 win over Rutgers. Two days later, she contributed her second career goal in the team's win over Long Island. Ali has started the last seven games for the Cardinal, and is a member of the impressive freshman class that has been responsible for nearly half of Stanford's scoring.

Question of the Week: What is your favorite soccer memory?

"My favorite soccer memory is from Samoa when my team won the qualifiers to go play in Russia. I don't think I've seen a group of 18 girls that happy in my entire life. We poured the whole bucket of Gatorade on our coach and, if you think of a perfect celebration of a winning team, that was exactly what it was. It was in the most beautiful place in the world and my parents had come all the way there to watch. We were just so excited to be able to go to a World Cup. On the way back to our hotel from the game, we were all hanging out of the windows of the bus. We went around this roundabout in the middle of the city like 10 times in this old wooden bus. We were just blasting music and just singing and yelling the entire night. It was such an amazing experience and an amazing feeling."

The Week That Was: Santa Clara

"I think the first half we were a little bit nervous. Santa Clara plays very confidently and they're just very tough mentally. By the time we got ourselves together, it was the second half and we were down a goal. We definitely could have come back though. Obviously, what we did well was shooting. We just have to take advantage of those opportunities. The fact that they only had two shots and scored both of them is just kind of heartbreaking. I think the game was good because it showed us that even if we re-group, get ourselves together and play hard, we still have to finish our shots and we still have to be mentally tough. Santa Clara is not the only school that we're going to play that is doing really, really well and has a really confident attitude. We have to be able to stand up to that and put shots away. Overall, I think we learned a lot from the game."

The Week That Is: USC and UCLA

"I don't know too much about the teams, but I know a lot about the players. I know a lot of the girls on the UCLA team and my dad is a professor at UCLA so I've grown up going to those games and watching the UCLA team play. I think it will be really exciting. A bunch of my friends from high school are coming and all of my friends and family who are around have told me they're coming out to the games, which will be fun. Both teams have some really, really good players and U-20 World Cup players. Two of the girls on UCLA were on my club team so I've played with them for a couple years. Our team is definitely going to keep improving for this weekend. The way we play and how well we play together has been improving and so has our passing and shooting. Every single game we are getting better. I think once we improve our mental toughness, we'll be unstoppable. We've showed that we can play with, if not better than, the best teams right now. We need to work on actually putting the ball into the back of the net this weekend and focus on having confidence and mental toughness."