Allison Alberts
Allison Alberts puts her game face on
It only took one night of watching the Legends Football League (LFL) games on MTV2 that Allison Alberts decided this was something she wanted to do. Dr. Alberts, a 2013 graduate of the University of Illinois Chicago College of Dentistry, had been a two-sport athlete in colleg
e: volleyball and track. After watching the LFL on TV, Dr. Alberts thought to herself, “I can totally play this.”
She started looking for information on when tryouts would be held and saw that they were not for almost another year.
“I actually tried out for the St. Louis team because I had missed the Chicago tryout. Once I made it that day, I asked the commissioner if I could maybe join the Chicago team instead since that is where I lived,” said Dr. Alberts. “I got the information for the Chicago coach and that’s how I joined the team.”
Tryouts involved basic football drills to determine who was athletic and who wasn’t.
“I had not played formal football in any sense,” said Dr. Alberts. “But, I knew how to throw a football and I knew how to catch because we did play football during recess growing up.”
During dental school in Chicago, Dr. Alberts played on a lot of co-ed flag football teams and learned about the routes from her teammates.
Dr. Alberts’ rookie season in the LFL was in 2013. However, her first game had a bit of a rough start.
“It turned out pretty well during the first half, but unfortunately I got knocked out cold during one of the drives in the second half,” said Dr. Alberts. “It was a rude awakening to the type of real football that we play.”
Despite making her family second guess letting their daughter play, Dr. Alberts powered forward and helped lead the Bliss to the championship game. They won the Legends Cup in September, beating the Philadelphia Passion in Las Vegas.
“I won a national championship in college for volleyball and two state titles for track in high school,” said Dr. Alberts. “Winning the Legends Cup last year was like winning at the highest level again. There is not another feeling like it.”
The Bliss face the Los Angeles Temptation May 9 at the Sears Center in Hoffman Estates for the first game of the season. Before the Bliss won in 2013, the Temptation had won the championship three years in a row.
“The Bliss had never won before. No one else had won before besides LA. When I got to come in my rookie season and take them all the way, there is nothing really like that,” said Dr. Alberts. “The Los Angeles Temptation will be coming at us hard in our first game.”
Ms. Azark is the CDS manager of communications.