Seeking sporting comfort, women tap into a long-ignored market.

Byline: Jessica Guynn

WALNUT CREEK, Calif. _ Missy Park was never one to play by the rules.

At a time when most high school girls stayed on the sidelines, Park played a different sport every season in her hometown of Greenville, S.C.: tennis in the fall, basketball in the winter and softball in the spring. She almost flunked physical education because she used to skip the morning class to shoot hoops at the local YMCA. At Yale University, she was in constant motion, playing on three varsity teams: basketball, tennis and lacrosse.

"I was among the first group of girls who grew up with Title IX all the way through high school and college," said Park, who was 10 when Congress approved the landmark federal law that banned discrimination in school sports in 1972.

Her sole complaint: Women's sports apparel was not created equal. It was made for men, not women. None of her uniforms ever fit right _ the shoulders sloped, the shorts hung low _ except for the lacrosse kilt. Park even had to cushion her cleats with foam to make them snug enough.

After graduation and a couple of college coaching stints, Park packed up her pluck and her old pick-up truck and drove west in search of a career that embraced her nonstop love of sports. Unrolling her tent that first night on the road, she read the fine print on the tag: "The North Face, 999 Harrison St., Berkeley." Her destination: the center of the outdoor sports universe, a constellation of companies from The North Face to Sierra Designs.

With a few years experience in the sporting goods industry under her belt, the 26-year-old flexed her entrepreneurial muscles. She banked her entire net worth _ $15,000 in savings _ on a hunch that other women shared her frustration with bras that sagged, sweatpants and running shorts that pulled in the hips and crotch and high tops so wide they slid in the heel. She called her new company Title Nine Sports and built it on a simple premise: Every woman should be comfortable when she works out.