As a youngster, Fern (Ferguson) Hurt started out playing ball with her three brothers.  By the time she was 15, she was a pitcher for an industry-backed softball team in Iowa with whom she pitched a shut-out game.  When she saw a notice for AAGPBL tryouts in St. Louis in a newspaper ad in the spring of 1945, she attend and was signed to play with the Racine (WI) Belles.  

Fern joined the Belles as a pitcher when she was 20 years old and a sophomore in Arts and Science at Missouri University.  She traveled with the team for three weeks before being used as a reliever.  This was not unusual, since the pitching distance in the AAGPBL in 1945 was 42 feet rather than softball's 40 feet, and it took pitchers time to adjust to the extended distance.  Fern made her debut as a starting pitcher for the Belles in mid-July and lasted six innings before losing to the Grand Rapids Chicks.  Racine traded Fern to the South Bend Blue Sox in late July, and South Bend released her in early August 1945.  In October of that year, Fern said she hoped to return to the AAGPBL in 1946 in the capacity of a chaperone.  Her plans must have changed once she joined the University's School of Business and Public Administration in February 1946 because there is no record that she rejoined the AAGPBL.  

Fern married Warren Whitney Hurt in Washington, DC in 1948.  They had a daughter, Sherri Jean, and later moved to Maitland, Florida where Fern became active in the League of Women Voters and the Democratic Women's Club.  In 1966 she ran for and won the post of Democratic State Committee-woman for Florida's Orange County.