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n conversations about Chris Cloutier, the phrase “blue collar” always comes up. It’s fitting, too, for a kid from Kitchener, Ontario, which started as a manufacturing city, whose mom is a police officer and whose father is a mechanic.

They’re roots that Cloutier, now a junior attackman at North Carolina, hasn’t lost sight of either. His first summer back from college, he worked at a steel mill, and then landed a construction gig the following year and this go-around he’ll work in a cement yard.

And the 21-year-old wasn’t doing it for fun, but to help his parents pay for college, a responsibility Cloutier said he takes great pride in.

“The way my parents raised me, it’s never to take anything for granted,” Cloutier said. “It makes you really cherish your times at school, because you don’t know what’s coming next, and it helps you appreciate everything you’ve been given, the sacrifices that my parents make for me.”

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loutier, true to his blue-collar approach, is repaying them on the field and then some, especially in big-time games.

In 2016, he burst onto the scene, being named the NCAA championship’s Most Outstanding Player after a nine-goal performance against Loyola and potting the overtime game-winner against Maryland in the title game. Then, after a slow start to 2017, again he showed his knack for clutch performances, earning MVP of the ACC tournament and helping the Tar Heels clinch a spot in this year’s NCAA tournament.

“It's funny because after the championship last year, we had a team meeting when we got back,” said Joe Breschi, the Tar Heels’ head coach. “I said, 'Look, next year Clouts, we're going to have every game be a playoff or a tournament because you end up becoming MVP of it.' Honestly, I just think he rises to the occasion when it comes to competition.”

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ow, Breschi hopes Cloutier will channel that approach Saturday when UNC takes on Albany in the opening round of the NCAA tournament, but a deeper dive into Cloutier’s backstory reveals a complicated character.

The lefty grew up playing box lacrosse, and didn’t play much field lacrosse until he arrived at the Hill Academy as a junior in high school. The transition was pretty seamless, though, and Brodie Merrill, his head coach at the school, said it was because of Cloutier’s background in basketball, his second-favorite sport.

He’d barrel into defensemen, much like John Grant Jr., the player Cloutier said he idolized growing up, would. It’s something Breschi picked up on, too, as the Tar Heels play hoops once a week during the fall semester.

“I liken him to Charles Barkley, kind of that power forward type guy,” Breschi said. “That's the way he plays basketball and the way he plays lacrosse.”

The unavoidable truth about Cloutier, though, is that at 6-foot, 230 pounds, he is hefty. He loves his junk food — Wings Over Chapel Hill near UNC’s campus, pretty much anything with buffalo sauce. Cloutier and Patrick Merrill, Brodie’s brother and also a coach at the Hill Academy, can’t help but laugh when they recall one story.

During Cloutier’s senior year, he stayed with Patrick Merrill and his wife, a couple who Cloutier said is “super health conscious.” So they’d cook his meals, and one day at practice, Brodie mentioned to Patrick that it looked like “Clouts” wasn’t losing any weight. The reason?

“One day my wife went down to clean up his living area,” Patrick Merrill said. “She went to make his bed and underneath his pillows here chip wrappers and Cheez-Its and all this junk food. He was hiding it from us, which was pretty comical considering the fact he was 18 years old and we weren’t even his parents. He’s a hard guy to get mad at. He’s like a big teddy bear.”

Breschi shared a similar story, one that centers around an intra-squad competition the Tar Heels hold throughout the fall semester. They’re divided into six different teams and accumulate points for all sorts of events — like pick-up basketball, community service and earning a 3.0 GPA.

Cloutier’s team won, which meant Breschi hosted those players at his house for dinner. That’s when the blue-collar kid’s fun-loving personality came out.

“My wife and I, she makes her buffalo chicken dip, two trays of it,” Breschi said. “I think the other seven guys ate one tray and Clouts ate the whole tray of buffalo chicken dip before we had the steak dinner. … He's just a terrific kid.”

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oking aside, Cloutier always passes UNC’s fitness test — running a six-minute mile — and works one-on-one with a nutritionist to always keep his diet under wraps. And most of all, he produces on the field, putting up 101 points (74 goals, 27 assists) over the last two seasons.

This weekend at Albany, when the Tar Heels’ NCAA title defense clicks into second gear, Cloutier and prime-time lacrosse will again take center stage. Breschi likened North Carolina’s two ACC tournament wins to the rounds of 64 and 32 in the NCAA basketball tournament. That’s how close the Tar Heels’ title defense came to ending before it even started. For Cloutier, this is the best time of the year.

“When our backs are up against the wall, I just take a different approach to the game,” he said. “Playing in big games for me is fun. Especially going away to another team’s home floor and having all the fans not liking you and chirping at you. I love that, that’s what makes lacrosse fun for me.”

That last part, according to Brodie Merrill, is what makes Cloutier who he is: a blue-collar kid from Ontario who simply loves scoring goals.

As a senior at the Hill Academy, Cloutier’s class organized the world’s longest indoor lacrosse game to raise money for a humanitarian trip, and Merrill recalled how he “must have had 60 or 70 goals.” As for Patrick Merrill, he remembered how they didn’t have room for Cloutier to park his car, so he parked at a community center “four of five blocks away,” got up every morning at around 6 a.m., headed down to his car and drove to practice.

And judging by input from his coaches and teammates, it’s the only way Cloutier knows — keeping his head down and having fun while he’s at it. After all, as he said, lacrosse is just a game.

“When I’m having fun, that’s when I’m at my best,” Cloutier said. “It’s pretty simple.”