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M

arie McCool wants to talk. 

She wants to chat about how much she likes certain potato chips or how much she hated last season’s “Bachelor” (the guy, not the show) and how proud she is of her childhood friends who are playing lacrosse at schools far from Chapel Hill, N.C.

She also wants to mention how great the freshmen on her North Carolina women’s lacrosse team are playing this season and how much she learned as one of the youngest players on last summer’s U.S. national team.

McCool is chatty by nature, friendly by default, a bit in awe of the fact that she has become relatively famous in the lacrosse world and because it obviously never occurs to her that, in the year 2018, she should hold back any thought that comes to her mind. And she’s happy to talk now, or later on the phone or whenever she’s not on the field, playing lacrosse. Because when she is playing lacrosse, when the game is on, McCool is not going to be talking. That’s when she will narrow her eyes, coil her body like a spring and, when the whistle blows, do everything she can to tear your whole team into tiny little pieces.

So whaddya want to talk about?

A Class By Herself

Deanna Knobloch still thinks that what McCool did in the 2014 New Jersey state championship game was simply unbelievable, and that is taking into account that Knobloch spent four years watching McCool do unbelievable things.

“Whenever I think about Marie, I think about that game,” said Knobloch, who coached McCool for four years at Moorestown High School outside Philadelphia. “I’ve been coaching 27 seasons and had the privilege of coaching a lot of exceptional lacrosse players, but Marie McCool is definitely in a class by herself. There’s no one to ever come through like her.”

It’s not that McCool is a stick-skills wizard, Knobloch says. Both at Moorestown and today as an All-American midfielder at North Carolina, McCool’s game is technically sound but not edgy. Instead, the word that comes up repeatedly to describe her game is “flow.” She favors transition and unsettled situations, corralling loose balls and running past defenders who can’t keep pace.

“That’s what’s so different about Marie,” Knobloch says. “She makes the game look beautiful and effortless.”

“That flow comes from Moorestown and Mrs. Knobloch,” McCool says. “I take pride in what I can do between the lines. Being able to run by people with the smooth style of play is something I work on as much as shooting or defense.”

McCool is happy to watch her teammates rip shots, she says, if she can create their chances.

“If you’re going into midfield and see a bunch of girls in front of you and you say, ‘Oh no, I can’t do this,’ you’re just going to reverse the ball and not get anywhere,” McCool says. “It’s important to think, ‘OK, I’m going drag this double team and reverse it, and someone is going to be open.’ So even if it looks like you’re not doing much, it is kind of having that lacrosse IQ.”

But “flow” and “IQ” only go so far without sheer competitive fire, which brings us to the 2014 title game. Moorestown was on a 76-game winning streak and had won two consecutive state championships. But the Quakers were being outscored and, worse, outhustled by Summit (N.J.). They trailed 5-3 at halftime. Then McCool scored four goals in four minutes, winning every draw between them. “She was double- and triple-teamed, and there was nothing stopping her,” Knobloch says. “She was like, ‘Bring it on.’ The more people they got on her, the more she’d dodge. She put the team on her back and said, ‘Come on girls, we’re winning this one.’”

After the game, Summit’s coach came over and just said, “Wow.”

But if McCool developed her “flow” or “wow” factor with Knoblach’s program, the fire at the heart of it comes from being Mary McCool’s youngest child.

Kid Sister

“I tell her a lot, ‘Marie, if you’d been my first child, you might have been my last,’” says Mary McCool, Marie’s mom.

“She says that a lot,” Marie confirms. “I had a lot of energy growing up.”

Despite being four and two years behind her sister, Erika, and brother, Michael, respectively, the youngest daughter was always the aggressive one. Marie would find one of her siblings on the couch and demand that he or she come play — which is to say, compete — with her outside. Shooting hoops, working on lacrosse moves, fighting for football passes.

Saying no didn’t help much.

“She’s got adrenaline like you wouldn’t believe,” Mary McCool says. “My son was the calm one. He’d be sitting there watching TV, and she’d go over and jump on top of him. Or Erika, my oldest, would be reading a book, and she’d come and just throw stuff at her. [Marie] was my challenging one. They were always afraid to do anything to her because she was the baby, and I would say, ‘You can do whatever you want, as long as there’s no blood.’”

When she wasn’t pestering her brother or sister, McCool often was with friends like Kierstyn Voiro, now a senior at Lehigh, or Quinn Nicolai, a freshman at Penn State. “She never wants to sit still,” Voiro says. “I’m more of the quieter, shy person. So [with McCool] as my best friend, that kind of balances our relationship out. She would always get me to come out my shell a little more just by her personality.”

When they’re home over the summer, McCool and Voiro still meet to watch the “The Bachelor,” just as they did in high school, sharing the horror of contestants’ poor choices.

“We would watch it every Monday night, stop at a certain commercial break, go upstairs and get a bowl of chocolate ice cream with sprinkles,” McCool says. “We still call or Snapchat each other, ‘Can you believe she did that?’”

Nicolai was in the unusual position of growing up best friends with a star three grades ahead of her. They grew up neighbors, running between houses as young kids, teaching each other to play sports even if their ages made an unusual split for best friends.

“She was all over the newspaper, and everyone was like, ‘Wait, you’re really good friends with Marie?’ I just didn’t understand it, because she never acted like anything but my best friend,” Voiro says.

The Sweet Spot

North Carolina coach Jenny Levy says McCool’s approach to sport and life hits a sweet spot that many elite female athletes struggle to find, integrating high competitive drives with an inclusive, extroverted nature.

“People feel like, if you are a great player, your personality needs to be a super-introverted, intense, unfriendly eat-glass type of person,” Levy says. “I’ve coached kids like that, and they have been very successful, but sometimes I think they play with such a heavy heart that they don’t have an outlet to just relax.”

Freshman Jamie Ortega says building friendships within the team is a staple of McCool’s leadership.       

“She’ll never get mad at you for making a mistake as long as you’re trying to get better,” Ortega says. “Everyone is so nervous to play in a game and to practice well, but she pushes a lot of us to believe in ourselves, like ‘Go, you can do it.’”

McCool and Ortega are North Carolina’s top two goal scorers and teamed up for the biggest goal of the season, an overtime winner against No. 1 Maryland on Feb. 24. McCool, who helped tie the game late in regulation on a beautifully threaded spot feed to Ela Hazar, this time was on the finishing end, as the Tar Heels defeated the top-ranked Terps 16-15. That win was a highlight in a 2018 season that has also been bumpy for North Carolina — marked by losses to James Madison, Florida and Boston College — and for McCool as a team leader.

“Talent is not our problem,” McCool says. “It’s a matter of adjusting, and that’s what a whole season is for. You can lose in March, and it doesn’t matter, because if you win in May, you can win a national championship.”

PHOTOS BY ANDY LEWIS, PETE EMERSON AND ADY KERRY

Last year’s Tar Heels were brimming with seniors, most of whom were seasoned team leaders who, McCool says, allowed her to focus on playing her game. After the season, McCool joined the U.S. national team as its youngest field player. (USC goalie Gussie Johns is 21 days younger than McCool.)

But when McCool returned to campus, she was suddenly the team’s most experienced player and also its top returning scorer. And when UNC’s young roster has struggled to find its footing at times, McCool has found herself having to take over games in ways she hasn’t since that state title game in 2014.

In late March, the Tar Heels trailed Virginia Tech 12-11 with four minutes to play. In 24 meetings, North Carolina had never lost to the Hokies.

In quick succession, McCool caused a turnover, won the ground ball and cleared up field with a dodge and a pass. A minute later, Olivia Ferrucci tied the game for UNC. McCool won the next draw, leading to another Ferrucci goal in less than 30 seconds to give the Tar Heels the lead. McCool then won the final draw and did most of the work running out the final 90 seconds.

Two draw controls, a turnover, a ground ball and a clear, in less than four minutes to salvage a season on the edge. This was not the McCool who chats about junk food and “The Bachelor.” This was the McCool who reduces other coaches to a begrudging “wow.”

“Some people might call it toughness or grit,” Levy says. “Some people might just love that moment. You don’t get a lot of it. Not everyone gets a chance to be in those situations, and how you respond reveals a lot about who you are. And Marie has always risen in those occasions.”