Quite familiar with snowy winters on the East Coast, it turns out Brian Karalunas is a fan of wearing shorts and a T-shirt during the holiday season as a law student at Stanford.

“It’s definitely nice not having to experience winter for the first time,” said Karalunas, who moved into graduate housing in August of last year. “I loved it. It makes it way easier to get up there and run those sprints, or get a workout in after class. You don’t have to worry about throwing on cold gear.”

The 26-year-old was raised in Syracuse, N.Y., and grew up playing hockey and soccer. While in middle school, a friend asked him to join the lacrosse team.

“Then, when high school came, I just fell in love with the game,” said Karalunas, who went on to become the first three-time men’s lacrosse All-American at Villanova. “I obviously had the opportunity to play collegiately, and I just really wanted to keep playing, so the rest was history.”

History is in the making as Major League Lacrosse will host its 15th annual All-Star Game on Saturday at Titan Stadium in Fullerton. Karalunas, who plays long-stick midfield for the Ohio Machine, was selected as an All-Star for a fifth time.

“It’s obviously humbling anytime you get selected for that honor, playing against the best lacrosse players in the world,” Karalunas said. “For me, this is my sixth year — and that’s amazing to say, the time has really flown by. I remember kind of being in awe when I was first picked and now it’s a little bit of validation, it reminds me that I can still play with all the young bucks coming out of college, which is nice.”

A bigger challenge is balancing law school at Stanford with travel back and forth to Columbus, Ohio — not to mention for games in New York, Boston, Atlanta and the other cities with MLL teams.

For Karalunas, the juggling proved beneficial.

“I think it’s probably true of everyone, the busier you are, the more efficient you become with things,” Karalunas said. “So I knew that I had this obligation on the weekends, and really when the season came around it made me more productive during the week. I knew that I needed to get things done before I took off. And for me, it really doesn’t feel like business because I love playing so much and lacrosse is such a big passion of mine. And then it feels like I get to take a vacation every weekend, which is nice. It kind of balances those two lives.”

It’s easier now that he’s staying in Columbus to train with the Ohio Machine, but he’s all set to move back to a house in Palo Alto with a couple of classmates at Stanford.

After acclimating himself to the Peninsula — and the weather — Karalunas hopes to become more involved with the local lacrosse scene.

“At first, I didn’t know what to expect,” Karalunas said. “I knew the sport had been growing in the area. Obviously, it’s not at the level still where it is maybe so much at hot beds like Long Island, upstate New York and Maryland, but I was really impressed with a few youth programs there and then some pick-up leagues during the week.”

While the All-Star Game will take place in Fullerton, roughly 400 miles south of Stanford, the fact is that it’s still being held in California.

“I think that’s one of the things that makes this year particularly special,” Karalunas said. “The general consensus across the league is that none of us play this sport for the money. We all want to see the game grow and help be ambassadors of the game, and to have the game out there in California for the first time is going to be something really special.

“All of us, we like to see ourselves as the pioneers of the sport, and we would love to see it grow and to have professional teams in all the major markets, like you see in some of the other big-time sports. And I think this is a step in the right direction.”

Email Vytas Mazeika at vmazeika@dailynewsgroup.com; follow him at Twitter.com/dailynewsvytas.