Meet lawyer-linebacker Mindy White

The desire to spend more time with family can prompt some young associates to seek out career paths that are more flexible than the road to partner.

For Mindy White, it was football.

The thrill of black face paint, a helmet, shoulder pads and being part of a team that dueled on the field instead of the courtroom persuaded her to walk away from a promising position at Shook, Hardy & Bacon in 2006.

When she was 26, White was recruited to play for a women’s full-tackle football team in Kansas City. She initially said no.

“I was in my first big-girl job right out of law school,” White said. “The last thing I thought I was going to have time for was a hobby like football.”

But she was hooked after one practice with the Kansas City Storm — a team she would eventually attempt to buy. The Storm was affiliated with the Independent Women’s Football League — an organization she would later sue.

White balanced the responsibilities of working at a large firm with night and weekend football practices and out-of-town games for a while.

But ultimately she left Shook for a job as senior legal counsel for Layne Christensen Co. in Mission Woods, Kan. She shifted gears to her 8-to-5 post at the drilling and construction service provider so she’d have more time to play ball.

White, who had played softball and basketball for Northwest Missouri State University as an undergraduate, welcomed the camaraderie that being on a competitive team again offered her.

Then, after three seasons of administrative frustrations with the Storm, she persuaded a fellow University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Law graduate, Colin Stoner, and Independence firefighter John VanSittert in 2007 to help her find a solution.

“We were literally sitting at a happy hour with the KCMBA and I was lamenting about our issues and John was like, ‘Let’s just buy the team,’” White said.

Instead of buying the Storm, though, they ultimately decided to start a new team, the Kansas City Tribe. They were able to obtain an affiliation through the Independent Women’s Football League. (The Storm now plays through the Women’s Spring Football League.)

Now 33, White, the Tribe’s general manager and 5-foot-8, 165-pound linebacker, has co-owned the team with Stoner and VanSittert for three seasons.

Stoner focuses in real estate, business and corporate law as a solo practitioner in downtown Kansas City. He credits his independent arrangement for his ability to spend 15 or more hours a week with the team. Working for himself also gives him the freedom to perform free legal work for the team without having to ask for anyone’s permission.

“It’s helped out quite a bit,” he said.

Indeed, the Tribe, whose players wear the 2009 IWFL championship rings, took on the league in a lawsuit filed this month in Jackson County Circuit Court. The Tribe wants out of the league and is challenging a non-compete clause its owners contend they never signed.

League officials didn’t respond to e-mail inquiries or a phone message last week.

‘Not a powder-puff game’

“It kind of came out of the blue. I never thought I’d own a women’s football team,” Stoner said. But he said he was surprisingly impressed the first time he saw the players in action.

“It’s not a powder-puff game. They play at a very high level,” he said. “We want to provide a good, stable outlet for women to play football because there are a lot of women who want to do it.”

The Tribe in 2010 boasted a roster of 37 players, ranging in age from 25 to 46. The median age of the team was 34 or 35 during the inaugural 2008 season, but now it is 26 or 27. Owners see the change as a sign that more women are continuing their athletic careers out of college instead of joining as a hobby.

White describes the players as semi-professional because of the option to earn performance-based bonuses.

Many of the women are local, but some drive from as far away as Columbia, Springfield and Des Moines, Iowa, for practices, which take place two to three times a week plus weekends. Most of the players work at full-time jobs, and many have children, fueling a constant scheduling balancing act for team leaders.

Players say no major rule differences exist between men’s professional football and full-tackle women’s football, other than the ball is a little smaller. Unlike professional men’s football, IWFL teams have a spring/summer season.

Injuries are common. White, recovering from a fracture at a July all-star game, still wears a wrist support.

Stoner said he witnessed a Tribe player pop her own shoulder back into place before returning to the field — a choice he said most men wouldn’t make.

Stoner’s father, Larry Stoner, who previously coached for the Tribe, noted that the team’s quarterback, Jenny Schmidt, in 2009 threw roughly 43 touchdowns in 11 games.

“Compare that to the NFL, which has 16 games. She probably in the NFL would’ve set the record for passing touchdowns,” he said. “These kids are really, really good athletes. But it’s their dedication and their tenacity and a little bit of meanness — they refuse to lose, that’s what it is.”

Colin’s mother, Connie Stoner, helps at the gate on game days.

The team’s home games take place at a stadium they rent at Center High School near the Brookside neighborhood in Kansas City, where Connie Stoner said the fan base has grown every year.

The Tribe went 4-4 during its first season. They came back in 2009, winning 10 games and losing 1, which helped them capture the 2009 World Championship. They had a 6-2 record in 2010, but their ranking didn’t get them to the playoffs.

Colin Stoner described the Tribe as a “mom-and-pop” operation because little money exists to pay staff on its $30,000 budget. Player dues make up one-third of the budget. The rest is generated by ticket sales (admission is $10), sponsorships and investment from the owners.

The Tribe and its players are responsible for all travel, uniform, stadium rentals, recruitment, advertising and marketing expenses.

“We do this generally at an economic loss,” Stoner said

When owners are attorneys

The Tribe is looking to courts in Missouri to help the team avoid a debilitating $50,000 fine the Texas-based IWFL has made clear it will impose on teams looking to jump ship.

The Tribe seeks a temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction against the league from assessing the fine so they can join a different league for the 2011 season. The Tribe argues the fine is inequitable relief for a team with a $30,000 budget.

“They haven’t done a very good job with housekeeping of their legal documents. Our contention is it doesn’t matter what it says because we’re not bound to it,” White said of the non-compete clause. “It would bankrupt the team.”

In its petition, the team complains the league has “failed” in marketing and promotion efforts for the team and, in general, for the league.

As an example, team members were disappointed when the league’s 2009 world championship game in Round Rock, Texas, attracted less than 500 fans. The Tribe won the championship over the D.C. Divas, 21-18.

As a comparison, players said the Tribe draws crowds between 500 and 1,000 on a regular basis at its home games.

“You would think that if this is their marquee event of their league, they could have publicized it better,” said Schmidt, the team’s quarterback.

The suit labels the IWFL as a “detriment to the future success of the sport of women’s tackle football and the Team.”

Stoner said the league only performs one major function for the team: It decides the game schedule.

After fielding team questions about the league’s non-compete rules, IWFL Chief Executive Officer Laurie Frederick released a message to its teams July 15, noting that it had assessed $50,000 non-compete fines against the Binghamton Tiger Cats in New York and Jersey Justice.

“I assure you the policy is being enforced to the best of our ability,” Frederick wrote in the message, which was included as an exhibit in the Tribe’s lawsuit.

“It is unfortunate that we have been forced to take such action but it is unfair to those of you whom have remained compliant and in good standing for these teams to continue without being penalized using the methods they have all agreed to via the IWFL Operating Documents.”

The documents include a provision that prohibits team owners from managing or operating a similar or competing business for one year after the termination of the agreement, according to an excerpt included in the lawsuit.

The Tribe acknowledged in the suit that its owners were required to execute operating documents in November 2007 before starting the 2008 season.

However, the league amended the operating documents in 2008 and 2009 without asking the Tribe to sign off on or execute the documents, Tribe owners argue.

The owners contend the documents require a team delegate’s signature every year to be valid, or they expire. They are asking a judge to declare that the non-compete clause is unenforceable.

“Our primary contention is we haven’t received the support that has been promised to us, and we really just want to find the best option to … publicize this league so more people actually know about it,” White said. “Everything that the teams are doing, they’re doing on they’re own, they’re making their own capital and there really just isn’t support from that national level.”

John Schultz, of Franke Schultz & Mullen in Kansas City, represents the Tribe, but he declined an interview.

A hearing is set in the case at 9:30 a.m. today before Judge Jay Daugherty, whose decision may help White determine whether or not her gamble in leaving Shook, Hardy & Bacon was worth it.

Leaders at the large Kansas City firm must not have many hard feelings. They took out a full-page ad in the Tribe’s 2010 media guide.

The case is Kansas City Women’s Football Club d/b/a Kansas City Tribe v. Independent Women’s Football League, 1016-CV25073.