Britton swarms to support South Dakota State alum Dallas Goedert in 1st Super Bowl

The night before Mary and Gary Carlson’s flight left Sioux Falls at 8 a.m. Friday en route to the Super Bowl, Mary already knew how things would go.

Her alarm would go off at 5 a.m. and she’ll “jump in and finish” whatever work she has to get done before they go.

She’d go to a workout, and at that point, Gary would start pacing. He’d ask if Mary started packing yet. Mary is relaxed, though. She’ll be ready. Perhaps 5 minutes before Gary feels it has “gotten too close,” but she’ll be ready.

“I think now I might be a little more lackadaisical or relaxed than I was five years ago,” Carlson said. “(But) things haven't changed much.”

Mary is used to this. Since her son, Philadelphia Eagles and former South Dakota State star tight end Dallas Goedert, first joined the NFL, she’s become her family’s unofficial ticket “liaison.” This weekend, Goedert’s playing in the Super Bowl for the first time, but they’ve made trips like these before.

More:How SDSU's Dallas Goedert, 2 other players from South Dakota qualified for the Super Bowl

The 21 supporters that will be at the game is less than the 27 that attended the NFC Championship game two weeks prior — the one time the Eagles were unsure if they could provide the necessary tickets Goedert’s swarming family fanbase would need (they did, though).

"We've been going to work every day just like normal," Gary said. "It's just been kind of building up a little bit more, maybe anxiety and nerves, as it gets closer. People want to talk about it a lot."

Mary and Gary, Goedert’s step-father, will lead the group going to the game in Phoenix, with about 30 more planning to watch the game at an Airbnb while the ticketed family members watch inside the stadium. And back in Britton, Goedert’s father, Dave, will be among a group of 50 including Goedert’s Aunt, Dianne Yelkin, and Yelkin’s daughter-in-law, Sydney. Sydney manages the Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 3507 in town, where they will hold the Super Bowl party.

Sports come naturally to the Goedert family

For Goedert’s family, as well as the city of Britton, these game days have become highly-anticipated events, with just a few more of them occurring this season. After the Eagles traded for star wide receiver AJ Brown the night of the NFL Draft in April 2022, Goedert told his mother, Mary, “We’re going to the Super Bowl.”

But that assertion alone doesn’t mean family members could start planning their trips. In a family of “definitely not huge planners,” Goedert’s sister Megan Ochsner said, this weekend, it’s all about the game. They’ll figure out everything else when they get there.

“When it’s such a big group, whether they're trying to or not trying to,there's always somebody not ready,” Ochsner said. “And I know Gary and my mom and even I want to get to the stadium as soon as we can get in, and just experience it there.”

As much as this weekend might be different, Goedert’s family has always traveled in groups. His sister, Emily Hrabik, said her grandparents were adept at keeping the family close. So, Christmas and other holidays often packed 50-plus into one home. They’d play speed Solitaire and Spoons. Bingo, especially, got competitive.

Ochsner joked she, Goedert and Hrabik never “dreamed of being anything in the corporate world.” Mary was a standout high school softball player and their father, Dave, was a four-sport athlete, who won a state championship in discus and played college football. So, an athletics scholarship was always the avenue to the college degree that Mary wanted for her children. Sports were made a part of their lives naturally, and they loved it, they said.

More:What to know about South Dakota native Dallas Goedert, now Super Bowl-bound with Eagles

Goedert, for one, has been playing in the Super Bowl since he was a young kid. And he’s never lost — at least when he played Ochsner. Each year, they played a Madden NFL game on their Playstation 2, where they’d pick the two teams in the Super Bowl that year and Goedert would always win. The one year she was winning, when Goedert was 12 and Ochsner was 13, Ochsner accidently kicked out the plug mid-game.

Their sports obsession worked, though. Ochsner became an all-conference volleyball player at Presentation College, Hrabik played both volleyball and basketball at Valley City State University and Goedert had scholarships to play basketball plus, of course, a walk-on spot at South Dakota State.

“It's not really a surprise that this has been how it (went), because it's just all we've ever known," Hrabik said.

"Fly Eagles, Fly"

That’s when things sped up for Goedert’s support group. The venues got bigger -- to South Dakota State and, eventually, the NFL. And the competition for who can be the loudest to call out to Goedert in the stands grew greater in numbers, even if Mary still always wins.

Britton became unofficial Eagles country. Goedert’s alma mater Britton-Hecla High School chanted “Fly Eagles, Fly” at the end of a pep rally, sending off the gymnastics team headed to the state championship this week. Two weeks ago, Yelkin was in Goedert’s house in Philadelphia as her son-in-law cooked steak, sausages and ribs for Goedert and a few of his friends on the Eagles team ahead of the NFC Championship game. Now for the Super Bowl, she’s helping set up the Eagles decorations at the VFW, which expects a large crowd of exclusively Eagles fans 1,419.5 miles from Philadelphia.

“We're thinking they're going to be doing fairly good,” Yelkin said. “They've got this.”

By Saturday morning in Phoenix, much of who will arrive at the Airbnb was already there, so the family started to get together their plans.

It hasn’t quite hit Hrabik yet: This is the Super Bowl. They visited Goedert at his hotel Friday and security was noticeably tighter. She’s had butterflies in her stomach the last week, but she won’t know for sure if that’s related to the game until she walks through the gates Sunday.

Saturday night, Goedert’s agent set up a taco truck to come by the Airbnb, where they were joined by the rest of the group in Phoenix for the first official family meetup of the weekend.

Hrabik said her grandparents have "since passed," and the large family gatherings they had grown used to have gotten smaller. Everyone has “obligations,” she said, and it’s become more difficult to get everyone together. But on Sundays, during the NFL season, from Philadelphia to Phoenix to the first game of the regular-season to the biggest game of them all, they have an excuse.

“Because of this opportunity and the things that he's doing, it just kept our family so close and so tight knit and allowed us to be together more than maybe we would be now,” Hrabik said of her brother, Goedert. “It's like he has a second purpose.”

Follow Sioux Falls Argus Leader reporter Michael McCleary on Twitter @mikejmccleary.

This article originally appeared on Sioux Falls Argus Leader: Britton swarms to support SDSU alum Dallas Goedert in 1st Super Bowl