Stella Stakolosa grinned when she saw the image projected on the screen Tuesday morning in a classroom at College Park Academy, a charter high school in Riverdale Park, Md.
“Mom, it says Stella!” the young girl exclaimed to her mother, Megan Stakolosa. Stella pumped her fist.
Stella, who has cerebral palsy and uses a wheelchair, was the center of attention at the school where about 20 high school juniors and seniors spent the past semester working on a project to help her play lacrosse, her favorite sport. This was the day they would reveal the result they engineered, a lacrosse stick mounted to her wheelchair with a trigger mechanism that allows her to launch a ball with an easy pull on a string.
The first 10 years of Stella’s life have been anything but easy. She has had two open heart surgeries, a stroke and a steady diet of doctor’s visits. But she’s feisty and determined, her mother said and “nothing has ever stopped her.”
Advertisem*nt
Stella is also into sports. Playing them, not watching them. (Though she did watch the Super Bowl earlier this year wearing her “Let’s Go Taylor Swift’s Boyfriend!” shirt.) She’s taken part in everything from swimming and cheerleading, to horseback riding and now lacrosse, which attracted her interest when she saw her best friend play. “It looked really fun and I wanted to try it,” Stella said.
She found a way to do that last year with her team and coach at Parkville Adaptive Lacrosse, which launched in 2001 to welcome developmentally challenged players and help make the game safe and enjoyable for them. There she was paired up with a helper, Lily, a high school student at Notre Dame Prep, whom she really likes. “She’s very kind,” Stella said.
The coaches and helpers showed her how to play the game, but Stella had some difficulty holding the lacrosse stick and it occasionally got stuck in the wheels of her wheelchair. That was when her coach put the family in contact with Volunteers for Medical Engineering, an organization that works on solutions for people with disabilities. Stella and her family explained what she needed to the organization, which in turn connected them with College Park Academy to create the lacrosse stick.
In the College Park Academy class room, the juniors and seniors took turns describing their work on the stick and how it was fitted to Stella’s wheelchair in a way that made it accessible for her. Early in the process, the students held a Zoom meeting with Stella to find out exactly what she wanted in the finished product. They added a rearview mirror so she could see players coming up behind her and they decked out the new gear in pink and purple, Stella’s favorite colors.
The students are enrolled in the school’s Engineering for Us All (e4USA) course, part of a program co-founded by University of Maryland President Darryll J. Pines that aims to increase diversity in engineering and expand the range of projects students tackle. The e4USA curriculum, now in use in about 90 high schools across the country, teaches engineering principles to high school students and engages them in community-focused projects.
“We need to value diversity of expertise, backgrounds, experiences, and we need to focus our effort and resources into making our community a more welcoming and inclusive community,” Pines told the College Park Academy students. “If we do all of that, then we know that a new type of lacrosse stick isn’t just a new type of lacrosse stick. It represents what’s possible for Stella, for us and for everyone else.”
Then, for Stella, came the best part. Riding in her retrofitted wheelchair, she led the students to the school’s parking lot to test out the new equipment. A student latched the stick in place, put a ball in the netting and stepped back. Stella pulled the string and the ball sailed straight ahead, a perfect shot. Soon a small soccer goal was set up and Stella took several shots, each goal met with cheers and applause from the students.
“She came to us with a problem and we were able to find a solution,” Elizabeth Ayeni, 18, who just graduated and will attend the University of Maryland in the fall, said after watching Stella launch shot after shot with the new stick. “It means a lot to make someone’s life a little easier or a little nicer.”
Stella was thrilled with how well the new stick worked and is looking forward to using it in a game. And after receiving high-fives and hugs from the high school students who worked on the project, she sensed they got something out of it, too.
“I think they feel really good and happy to share this,” Stella said.
