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FIRM CONVICTION: Though she
has starred in basketball, Henning always dreamed
of being a lawyer.
Rod Searcey |
Sonja Henning logs a lot
of court time. When she’s not racking up assists
for the Indiana Fever, the former Cardinal point guard
works as a labor attorney for Tonkon Torp LLP in Portland,
Ore. She also serves as president of the Women’s
National Basketball Players Association.
At Stanford, Henning helped the Cardinal win the 1990
NCAA championship. She was named Pac-10 Player of the
Year and a Kodak All-American in her senior season.
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Courtesy Tonkin Torp LLP |
Following graduation, she took off for Sweden, where
she played professional basketball for a year. When
she returned to the States, she traded sneakers for
textbooks, enrolling at Duke University Law School.
“I never put much thought into playing basketball
again,” Henning says. “It was never really
a dream of mine.”
In fact, becoming an attorney had been the Wisconsin
native’s career goal since middle school. “When
everyone started asking what I wanted to be when I grew
up, law was the one area that stood out,” she
says. “I think it fit into my personality. I enjoy
analyzing things.” After earning her law degree,
she began practicing labor and employment law at Littler
Mendelson in Los Angeles.
In 1996, life got complicated. The American Basketball
League was born, and Henning found herself fielding
questions from co-workers about whether she planned
to try out. The turning point came when a colleague
advised her not to pass up the opportunity to play,
assuring her that she had the firm’s support.
Henning was delighted to be drafted by the San Jose
Lasers. “I was so excited to have the chance to
be a founding player—a pioneer, so to speak,”
she says. “It was great to be back in the area
and to reunite with some of the people I had played
with at Stanford,” such as Jennifer Azzi, ’90,
and Val Whiting Raymond, ’93.
After the ABL folded in 1998, Henning played for the
WNBA’s Houston Comets and Seattle Storm. She joined
the Fever in June 2003.
Each May, Henning takes a leave from Tonkon Torp and
joins her team for training. She plays basketball through
the summer, returning to the firm in mid-September.
Even with two demanding jobs, Henning has time for
the important things—like getting engaged to Weston
Miller, who is earning his master’s in fine arts
at Eastern Washington University. But ask Henning how
wedding planning has affected her work, and she laughs.
“There hasn’t been any effect, because the
plans have gone nowhere.”
Nevertheless, Henning says, her dual-career juggling
act is entirely worth it. “After every season,
I stop and re-evaluate whether I want to continue playing,”
she says. “Right now, I do.”
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