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Julie Ertz has a world championship and Player of the Year honors in her sport. So she’s already got an edge on husband Zach – that is Youth Rashaan Evans Jersey , if they were competitive.

She says the athletic couple doesn’t really try to one-up each other all that much.

”Maybe in board games,” she says with a laugh.

Julie and Zach are currently the sporting world’s ”It” couple. Julie is a midfielder for the World Cup-winning U.S. national soccer team, while her husband Zach is a tight end for the Super Bowl-bound Philadelphia Eagles. The joke is that they both play football, just different kinds.

Just as Zach was in Canada for the 2015 World Cup final cheering on Julie, she’ll be rooting for him on Sunday in Minneapolis. In fact, she’s already there, acting as a correspondent for the U.S. team’s Twitter feed .

The couple was married last March after a romance that started when Julie, then Julie Johnston, was an emerging soccer star at Santa Clara and Zach was playing at Stanford.

Julie’s career took off in 2015, well before Zach reached the NFL’s biggest stage, when she was selected by national team coach Jill Ellis for the World Cup roster. At 23, she was the second-youngest player on the squad for soccer’s premier tournament.

”You train as if whenever you’re called upon you’re ready,” she said. ”I think that was a huge mentality that was important for me. I know I really wanted to make the team, but I knew that I had a long way to go. So I tried every day to take it day by day and really learn anything I could at practice, and do every extra thing that I thought I needed to do.”

Johnston played on a backline that included Meghan Klingenberg, Becky Sauerbrunn and Ali Krieger. The defense was anchored by Hope Solo, who was spectacular in goal. The group went 540 minutes during the tournament without conceding a goal on the way to a 5-2 final victory over Japan.

With her trademark baby-blue headband, Johnston quickly proved she was one of the sport’s fastest-rising stars. Today, she’s introspective about her world championship.

”I could give you 1,000 moments that were special, but looking back it was the journey, and everything that I learned about myself and what I didn’t think I could do,” she said. ”I learned a lot Youth Harold Landry Jersey , and it really pushed my love for the sport even more than I already loved it.”

She shifted to a defensive midfielder position with the national team last year and did well. At the Tournament of Nations she came in as a substitute and scored the winner of a 4-3 victory in the 89th minute.

She played at that position the rest of the season, scoring six goals, including two against New Zealand. In December she was selected the national team’s Player of the Year, earning more than half of all the votes.

But probably the happiest thing she did last year was marry Zach. The two tied the knot in March in California.

Zach, 27, is in his fifth season with the Eagles. He broke out this season with 824 receiving yards, behind only New England’s Rob Gronkowski (1,084) and Kansas City’s Travis Kelce (1,038) among the ends. His eight touchdowns were double his previous career high, and he had eight catches for 93 yards in the NFC championship game.

The two were apart when the Eagles clinched their spot in the Super Bowl with a 38-7 victory over the Minnesota Vikings. Julie was in San Diego for a national team match against Denmark. She was among the players who scored in the 5-1 victory.

Afterward, when she was told Zach was going to the Super Bowl, she burst into tears .

”Zach knew I was there obviously in spirit and I was praying for him and I was excited for him and cheering him from miles away,” she said. ”It’s a part of our job and we sacrifice a lot, and time’s the biggest thing. But to find out that they are going to the Super Bowl was amazing, exciting, emotional. It’s really cool to see your loved one’s hard work pay off.”

That’s part of the mutual respect their marriage is built on.

”She understands how hard I worked and how hard this team worked to get to this point. We’re each other’s No. 1 fan. Our relationship wasn’t built on the athletic success. We truly love each other and that’s the most important thing,” Zach said.

To that end, Julie said it’s Zach’s turn in the spotlight.

”This is his time,” she said. ”I’m here. I’m a fan! I’m going to be in the stands, cheering with everyone else.”

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As they stagger toward the midpoint of their miserable 2018 baseball season, the Orioles own the worst record in the majors and are on pace to lose 100 games for only the third time since their move to Baltimore in 1954.

Worst of all, they never saw it coming.

After giving free agent Alex Cobb a four-year, $57 million contract and signing veteran right-hander Andrew Cashner Youth Da'Ron Payne Jersey , the Orioles figured they had a solid starting rotation to go with a power-laden lineup – a formula designed to produce the team’s fourth postseason berth in seven years under manager Buck Showalter.

”We had really high hopes, as most teams do, especially in spring training,” slugger Mark Trumbo said. ”Our offense was really firing, and we had both Cashner and Cobb coming into the fold to go with a similar group of guys from the last couple years.”

Nothing has gone according to plan. Entering Friday night’s game in Atlanta, the Orioles were 21-52 (10-29 on the road) and a whopping 29 games behind the first-place New York Yankees in the AL East. The last time a team has been at least 30 games behind at the end of June was 1979, when Toronto was looking way up at the Orioles.

”It’s kind of mind-boggling,” reliever Zach Britton said. ”It’s tough. We thought we’d be fighting for a playoff spot, and we’re not even halfway through and we’re already close to being mathematically eliminated from playoff contention.

”I can’t remember being in this type of situation here, maybe my first year in 2011 when we were pretty bad from the get-go. But I don’t even think it was this bad, and this roster has a lot of talent on it.”

Injuries have been a factor. Trumbo and Britton began the season on the disabled list, third baseman Tim Beckham has been sidelined since April 24 and 2017 All-Star second baseman Jonathan Schoop missed three weeks with an oblique strain. Outfielder Colby Rasmus languished on the 60-day disabled list before hitting a home run Thursday in his first action since April 6.

But the core of the problem has been, quite simply, poor performances by the vast majority of the team – most notably two-time AL home run champion Chris Davis, who’s in the third season of a seven-year, $161 million contract.

Davis is batting .150 with four homers and 15 RBIs in 57 games. He is slated to return to the lineup on Friday night following a hiatus of nearly two weeks during which he worked to get his mojo back.

But Davis isn’t the only underachiever. Schoop has a .209 batting average, starting catcher Caleb Joseph is at .172, Trey Mancini is hitting at a .220 clip (down from .293 as a rookie last year) and the collective batting average of .227 is tied for last in the big leagues with Arizona. Baltimore has been blanked eight times, and no team in the majors has scored fewer runs.

”I can’t remember having a team with so many guys who haven’t swung the bats as they have in the past, or the way they are expected to produce over the course of a full season,” Showalter said.

The best hitters on the team are Manny Machado (.304, 18 HRs, 53 RBIs) and Adam Jones (.292 Youth Derrius Guice Jersey , 10, 31), both of whom are in the final year of their contracts and likely to be dealt before the July 31 non-waiver trade deadline.

It would take exceptional pitching to offset Baltimore’s meager offensive output, and that hasn’t happened. Cobb is 2-9 with a 7.14 ERA, Cashner is 2-8 and Gausman (3-6) has gone seven straight starts without a victory.

”I’ve never been a part of a team like this,” Gausman said. ”Ever since I came up (in 2013), we’ve been a winning ball club and a contender. So, this is really weird.”

Seems as if there’s no option but to tear it down and start over, beginning with some heavy trading action before July 31.

”If you just run the same roster out there the whole year, you don’t do yourself any justice,” said the 30-year-old Britton, who’s in the final season of his contract and a likely trading chip. ”It’s unfortunate for some of the guys who are going to be affected by it, but it’s the nature of the beast. When you don’t play well, people get replaced by younger players.”

Showalter and vice president of baseball operations Dan Duquette are also in the last year of their contracts, but situation likely won’t be addressed until the offseason.

Regardless, change is coming for a franchise still in search of its first World Series title since 1983.

”Sad to see it happen,” Gausman said. ”Obviously, I would love for us all to stay here and ride off into the sunset together. But at this point, that’s kind of unrealistic.”

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