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Lingerie's the Lure, but Football's the Game for Bliss QB Heather Furr

The former Plainfield resident and teacher is the quarterback for the all-women team, which won the Western Conference in 2010.

Former Plainfield teacher and basketball coach Heather Furr started her Labor Day holiday weekend not with a barbecue or road trip but with a pounding on the football field.

Furr, at 5-foot-7 and 135 pounds, is the quarterback for the Chicago Bliss and the reigning Lingerie Football League MVP. Her nickname is “Rockstar,” fans wield signs such as “Furr-minator” and “The Infurrno,” and game announcers routinely praise her ability to switch up from quarterback to wide receiver to slot receiver.

 “She can run with it, catch it and she can obviously throw it,” they say.

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“She’s a play maker.”

“She can do it all.”

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And, like the rest of the women in the LFL, she does so wearing little protection and battling severe injuries, brutal turf burn and occasional wardrobe malfunctions.

Furr plays in the LFL, she says, not for notoriety or exhibitionism but to fuel the competitive nature burning inside her since her childhood tomboy days of playing T-ball with neighborhood boys instead of Barbies with her sisters Stephanie, Nicole and Tiffany Furr.

“I love it, the competitiveness of it,” Furr, 26, said at the start of her second season with the Chicago Bliss, which ended a home-game winning streak Friday night with a 32-20 loss to the Las Vegas Sin at Toyota Park in Bridgeview. “I’m still not the most comfortable in the uniform. But once you get out on the field you forget about the uniform.”

And once (or if) spectators can see past the uniforms, she says, they’ll see the LFL players are true athletes.

“Everybody who hasn’t seen a game assumes it’s girls in lingerie trying to play football,” she said. “But we play 7-on-7 full tackle football. The ‘lingerie’ draws people and then they keep coming back because it’s real football.”

Real as in real injuries, for one. Furr said her knee is still clicking from an injury sustained scoring a touchdown seven months ago that looked “so nasty” in action it had to be taken down from the LFL’s Web site.

Real as in real dedication to another. The Bliss holds practice two or three times a week at the Bridgeview Sports Dome.

The “lingerie” comes into play at the season-finale Lingerie Bowl, held on Super Bowl Sunday. The Chicago Bliss was the top team in the Western Conference in 2010, beating the Miami Caliente in conference championships and earning a 3-2 season record. The Bliss went on to play the Lingerie Bowl VII, falling to the Los Angeles Temptation 27-14.

During the regular four-game season, LFL players wear revealing booty shorts, bikini-style halter tops with player numbers on the left breast and a garter belt on the right leg. Helmets, hard Styrofoam shoulder pads and kneepads are part of the uniform, too.

Cleavage is obviously a huge part of the games, which are televised on MTV2. But announcers and sideline reporters take the game seriously.

But what do the players’ friends and families have to say about it, you wonder?

“At first my father was questioning it because I have younger siblings who look up to me,” Furr said. “But he came to my first game and his viewpoint got turned around and now he’s my No.1 fan.”

Her cheering section now wears “Infurrno” T-shirts with flames.

Furr has made a name for herself as one of the most successful quarterbacks in the LFL. But she’s also known as a versatile player, with dual roles as a safety last season and now wide receiver.

Her stats list four touchdowns passing and six touchdowns running. But Furr says she doesn’t pay attention to her personal accomplishments.

“It’s how we do as a team that’s important.”

With an impressive 46.4 passing percentage, though, one has to wonder what her key to accurate throwing and passing is.

“I have an arm. I can throw almost the 50-yard field. But you have to read the defense and see who’s open,” she said. “I don’t try to thread the needle every time.”

And, as she proved in Friday night’s game, if no one is open, she’ll run the ball herself.

“I like having control of the offense,” she said, “but whatever helps my team the most I’m comfortable with as long as I’m on the field.”

Switching gears is something Furr is used to.

“I never focused my time on one sport,” she said. “I love changing it up.”

As the second-oldest of four girls, Furr – who moved to Plainfield at age 10 and graduated from in 2002 – grew up watching football with her father, Tom Furr, of Shorewood.

“I was my father’s ‘boy’ and was always the tomboy,” said Furr, who didn’t have any brothers to play ball with until halfway through high school. Her mother Christa and stepfather Mike Dillon, owner of Michael’s Pizza, have two sons, Michael and Marshall, and a daughter, Sarah.

By freshman year of high school, Furr played varsity volleyball, basketball and track. She was an All-Conference track star all four years, and also played fast-pitched softball, with the Plainfield girls winning a Class B State Championship.

She continued playing basketball and track at Valparaiso University and Elmhurst College, and was the basketball team captain at Elmhurst.

From 2007 to 2009, Furr taught fifth grade at Ridge Elementary School in Plainfield and coached girls’ basketball at Plainfield Central High School.

Furr now lives in Chicago’s Wrigleyville neighborhood and works for Squarz, an Internet marketing company. She said she hopes to return to school to earn a degree in physical education and teach physical education someday.

For now, she’ll continue baring her bod and braving the bruises on the football field.

“If you have to second guess what you put behind a tackle, you shouldn’t play,” she says. “You have to put your body on the line for the team.”

The Chicago Bliss’ next game is Oct. 7 at Toyota Park against Green Bay Chill. Tickets are $15 to $80 (plus fees). The Bliss also plays Nov. 19 at Minnesota Valkyrie and Jan. 20 at Los Angeles Temptation. For more details, visit www.lflus.com/chicagobliss.

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