Super Bowl berth was a team endeavor for the Ertzs

The minute the final whistle blew on the U.S. women’s friendly with Denmark on Sunday, all midfielder Julie Ertz wanted to know was who won.

Not the soccer game. Ertz’s first-half goal had started the Americans on their way to an easy win in San Diego. But with that over, her attention shifted to the NFC championship game in Philadelphia, where her husband, Zach Ertz, was trying to help get the Eagles to the Super Bowl.

“I was kind of looking around for someone to give me confirmation, an answer. And I felt like I needed it from at least three people,” she said.

When a team official finally convinced her the Eagles had beaten the Minnesota Vikings, Ertz collapsed into a teammate’s arms in tears.

“I just got super emotional,” she said.

The scene lit up social media and a short time later Zach, who led NFC tight ends in receptions (74) and receiving yardage (824) during the regular season, teared up in the Eagles locker room as he watched a replay of her reaction.

“Oh, man. That’s emotional for me,” Zach, an Orange County native, said as his wife yelped on camera. And not just because the $112,000 bonus for winning the Super Bowl is greater than the $99,450 Ertz (nee Johnston) got when the U.S. won the 2015 Women’s World Cup.

Of more importance is that the Super Bowl berth is something the couple has been working toward since Zach left Stanford for the NFL in 2013.

A marriage between two professional athletes necessarily involves challenges, with travel being the most obvious hurdle. Julie’s commitments with the national team and her schedule with the Chicago Red Stars of the National Women’s Soccer League keep her on the road during most of the NFL offseason and, as a result, the Ertzs spend nearly as much time communicating by text message and FaceTime as they do talking in person.

But there are benefits.

“Training-wise, I will always have a partner to train with,” Julie said. “We’re very similar in ways. It’s really cool to see how he takes his sport and how I take my sport.

“And we do it together. The support system that he has given me has helped tremendously.”

Equally important is the emotional help they provide one another, whether it’s a pat on the back after a big win or the knowledge that silence is often the most welcome gesture after a tough loss.

“The mental piece of a professional athlete is tremendous,” said Julie, 25. “Sometimes you don’t know what you want or what I need. But it’s nice to have someone to talk to … just the mental side and the support that we can give each other.

“My family, for example, they’re amazing. But sometimes it’s hard for them to understand because they’re not in the environment of ‘every second matters’ or crunch time, that kind of thing.”

That understanding doesn’t always carry over, however, which is the reason the competitive couple has taken a temporary break from playing cards with one another. The loser generally sulks, destroying the rest of the evening.

“Ultimately, this is such a short chapter of our life, such a short season of our life, that she can play as long as she wants, and I’m going to play as long as I want,” Zach, 27, told ESPNW. “Then eventually we’ll settle down and be normal married people.”

Not surprising, the two met at a sporting event, a 2012 baseball game at Stanford’s Sunken Diamond. Two years ago the couple returned to the field where Zach gave his girlfriend a diamond of her own, this one on an engagement ring. They were married 10 months ago and appeared together, without their respective uniforms, in ESPN The Magazine’s Body Issue last year.

Normally the Ertzs can watch each other’s games, either on TV or the Internet, when they’re apart. But Sunday they were playing at the same time. By halftime, the national team and the Eagles were comfortably in control.

“People kind of gave me the look and the smile,” Julie said. “I was trying to stay focused in my game. I wasn’t 100% sure but my team kind of made it obvious.

“I know playoffs are wild so I wasn’t going to have any emotion until I got the final.”

Julie refused to say whether a Super Bowl win would allow her husband, whose first sport as a boy was soccer, to pull rank over a wife with a World Cup trophy. But she did offer a prediction for the game — this time, one she’ll be watching in person.

“Go Eagles,” she said.

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Follow Kevin Baxter on Twitter @kbaxter11