Manufacturers Court Female Athletes Sporting Goods Industry Churns Out Products Designed To Meet Specific Needs Of Women

When Chris Schnug started running 30 years ago, she wore a pair of lined mens’ running shorts - backwards.

“They were really uncomfortable, but they were the only ones with liners,” Schnug recalls with a laugh. “It was a long time before there were functional choices (for women athletes).”

Now when Schnug, a 52-year-old triathlete, walks into a sporting goods store, she sees rows and rows of choices. Jog bras and women’s shorts, $115 Nike Air running shoes, sweatbands and tank tops - all designed for women.

As Schnug prepares to run her 17th Bloomsday, she’s become acutely aware that times have changed. Now women athletes can find all the equipment and clothing they need, generally made smaller or more narrow to fit a woman’s body.

“You can find anything anywhere,” Schnug said. “There is so much that it is absolutely easy to choose.”

No wonder.

In Spokane, more women have run Bloomsday than men for the past 11 years. That’s a huge change from 1978, when the first statistics available from the race showed only 23 percent of participants were women.

This year, early estimates show that 57 percent are women.

The Bloomsday example is indicative of a nationwide trend. Women’s participation in sports has climbed dramatically in recent years and, as the numbers grow, so do women’s demands for clothing and equipment suited to their bodies.

Manufacturers have taken notice and begun to produce genderspecific clothing and gear, tapping into the lucrative market of women’s sports apparel.

“Five years ago, Nike had one (model of women’s basketball shoes). Now they have a whole line of them,” said Jeff Sweat, owner of Spokane Athletic, a store which wholesales sporting goods to high school and college teams. “I think the manufacturers are seeing a niche in womenspecific (items).”

Are they ever.

There are women’s softball bats, named after Olympic stars Dot Richardson and Lisa Fernandez. There are women’s basketball shoes, more narrow through the arch and heel. There even are swim goggles designed to better fit a woman’s face.

“To me it seems a little late in coming,” said Curt Kinghorn, manager of Sport Town, a sporting goods store in downtown Spokane. “The major purchasers are women and have been for a while.”

Good women’s equipment has been available since the late 1980s in some sports, such as running, Kinghorn said. But the attention garnered by the U.S. women’s Olympics teams and new professional sports teams has caused manufacturers to notice that women need clothing and gear for such sports as soccer and basketball too.

“Soccer shoes are a hard thing to buy for women,” said Kelle Vigeland, a 34-year-old triathlete and soccer player. “I’ve always had to buy men’s shoes, and they’re a little wide and sloppy.”

Women’s sports participation has been climbing for years. National reports say that eight times as many women play high school sports today as in 1972, and about 120,000 women play college sports, up from 35,000 in 1972.

In 1991, there were 88 all-female teams in Spokane’s Hoopfest basketball tournament - 8 percent of the 1,016 teams that participated. That number skyrocketed to 700 all-female teams in 1996 - 18 percent of the 3,093 teams.

And coed teams in softball, volleyball and at Hoopfest add still more to the total of women playing sports.

More female athletes means more sales for sporting goods dealers that can provide the right equipment.

In this region, Reebok’s sales of women’s walking and cross-training shoes increased 20 and 82 percent, respectively, from 1995 to 1996, said Cari Horning, Washington state representative for Reebok. Bill Metzer, a Nike account executive for this area, said he’s seen a 20 percent increase in women’s footwear in the past two years.

“As I’ve gotten better, doing more and liking it more, I started realizing I needed better quality stuff,” said Amina Giles, a 45-year-old triathlete who spends $85 every three months on new running shoes.

Athletes, manufacturers and retailers attribute the growth in women’s sports participation to a myriad of factors. A 1971 Supreme Court decision, commonly referred to as Title IX, opened doors for female athletes by forcing colleges to spend equal amounts on female and male students.

A ruling Monday by the Supreme Court said that colleges must have roughly the same amount of female and male athletes.

During the 1996 Olympics, the performance of the United State’s female athletes created new stars and role models for young female athletes. Many of them were snatched up by major sporting goods manufacturers to represent new clothing and equipment lines.

Somewhere along the line, it became cool for women to be jocks.

“It’s gone 180 degrees,” said Schnug. “Now the women’s athletic body type is a sought-after body type.”

Before this tidal wave hit, many women, like Schnug, had to make do with men’s clothing and gear. They’d fold over waistbands on shorts, or wear an extra pair of socks in a toobig man’s shoe - whatever was necessary to achieve the right fit.

There’s still a perception among many women that the men’s gear is better-made than the women’s.

A woman from Spokane Community College was looking for a pair of running shoes at Kimmel Athletic Supply recently. Manager John Jensen encouraged her to try the new women’s Puma.

“She said, ‘No way, I want this one,’ and she ended up buying a men’s Puma shoe,” Jensen said.

Despite such lingering perceptions, designers and retailers say the quality and amount of gear for women is catching up - or equal to - what’s produced for men.

Some designs now are named after famous female athletes, such as Nike’s Swoopes shoe, named after Olympic basketball star Sheryl Swoopes.

But the perception that men’s gear is better still prevents some retailers from devoting resources to new women’s lines.

“We look at women’s stuff and we’ve dabbled in it, but it always ends up in a mark down,” Jensen said. “We look at each other and we say, ‘Is this the year women are going to buy these things?”’

“The boys shoes were the ‘cool shoes,’ and that still happens to some degree,” agreed Reebok’s Horning.

Other retailers, however, say women’s lines of clothing are selling steadily.

“We sold every Swoopes (shoe) we had last year,” said Sport Town’s Kinghorn.

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: 2 Photos Graphic: Women on the run