Ertz, Athlete’s Corner feed Arizona families
Cards TE’s foundation, partner aid food banks
Zach Ertz is driven by the adage “to give is to receive” when he plays football.
The Cardinals tight end massively impacts hunger relief as he scores touchdowns from his receptions.
Since Ertz was traded to the Cardinals from the Philadelphia Eagles on Oct. 15, his Ertz Family Foundation and its nonprofit partner, Athlete’s Corner, have donated 5,000 meals per TD scored by the Cardinals via his Score For More campaign. They are up to 90,000 meal donations in Arizona, which are accepted through Feeding America’s program that sends the meals to food banks.
There have been 1.34 million meals donated from the campaign since it began nearly a year ago in Philadelphia.
The 31-year-old Ertz, his Mesa-raised wife and National Women’s Soccer League’s Chicago Red Stars midfielder Julie Ertz, and non-profit company Athlete’s Corner donated about 600,000 meals before the couple moved away from the City of Brotherly Love to the Valley.
The Cardinals currently hold the league’s second-best 38 TDs behind the Tampa Bay Buccaneers (39). Ertz has scored five TDs this season, including three with the Cardinals.
“The Foundation all started because we felt the love from the community in Philadelphia and it was just a way that we could reciprocate that love,” Ertz said last week. “And immediately when we got traded out here, and we had the response from the community out here, we said, ‘Hey, we really want to get involved doing something.’”
Because the Cardinals are on their bye week, the Score For More donation amount from Zach’s TDs in the Cardinals game against the Seattle Seahawks last Sunday was doubled from 5,000 to 10,000 before Thanksgiving.
Zach had his best game as a Cardinal, producing two TDs, leading to 20,000 meals, out of the Cardinals three total against Seattle.
In addition, Score For More worked with Team USA’s women’s soccer team in the Olympics last summer. Julie, 29, was a member of Team USA and there were meal donations to various food banks across the nation for every goal scored. That drive produced 650,000 meals, which came from 50,000 per goal and that same amount per win.
The meals are donated to four food banks across the state, including United Food Bank Volunteer Center in Julie’s hometown Mesa, St. Mary’s Phoenix Food Bank, Tucson’s Community Food Bank of Southern Arizona, and Yuma Community Food Bank.
United Food Bank provides meals covering approximately 20,000 square miles in Eastern Arizona. Tyson Nansel, the food bank’s vice president of external affairs, said it won’t see the impact of the donation until the NFL season ends in February.
“We’re serving 2,000 families today at our Thanksgiving distribution,” Nansel said on Monday.
Where Ertz Family Foundation is going
Ertz’s charity organization started in Philly, but its roots are in the northern California town of Alamo.
Zach’s mother, Lisa Ertz, raised him and his three brothers as Catholics in her single parent home. They were always involved in sports.
They weren’t as religious during her children’s adolescence. That changed for them during Zach’s college days at Stanford from 2009 to 2012, the year he was drafted by the Eagles. “It was sort of living your life as a Christian but Zach really did it on his own and he took it to a whole new level and has really brought the rest of our family along with him,” Lisa said. “Our faith is really the first touchpoint of our lives now.”
Lisa said Zach became a faith leader in the Eagles locker room and led their Bible study. He also ventured further into his volunteerism to serve God after he helped lead the Eagles to win the Super Bowl in February 2018.
“After he won the Super Bowl, he and Carson Wentz and the pastor who was pastoring over the team, a few others traveled to Haiti. It was really there that he realized his platform and his voice could really make a difference for kids in the Philly area, so they started their foundation in 2018.”
The Ertz Family Foundation was founded after he returned, which Lisa oversees from Philadelphia.
His partnership with Athlete’s Corner was forged when founder Brennen Creer met Zach and Julie in late 2020 in their working relationship for Maxwell Football
Club, which hands out annual college football awards. Brennen was a volunteer leading media relations and marketing for Maxwell.
The first project for Ertz Family Foundation and Athlete’s Corner was when they launched three public high school football combines titled Beyond The Field Senior Showcase. They hosted college scouts in the Philadelphia area last year during the pandemic after many senior players’ seasons were canceled. That helped those players’ recruitment with 50 scholarship offers.
Creer, 30, a native of Washington, has been working in the sports industry for the past six years since he launched sports app FireFan after he graduated from Utah Valley in 2016. He collaborated with over 100 pro athletes to build the app, which predicted the outcomes of sports games, and the app became popular downloaded in over 200 countries.
Creer lives with his wife, Katie, in her hometown Gilbert. Doubling as Phoenixbased customer service outsourcing solutions company Mammoth Tech’s Chief Marketing Officer, Creer launched Athlete’s Corner with former NBA player and Golden State Warriors television analyst Kelenna Azubuike in 2018. They recognized a void in the marketplace intersecting Christianity, family, sports and philanthropy.