Going to Bat for Girls Pamela Ryan makes the world safe for budding athletes-and their ponytails In 1990, when her twin daughters were 8 years old Pamela Ryan volunteered to coach their softball team. She still remembers the summer practice sessions in Saint Paul – 18 little girls in cleats, perched on a bench ready to play ball. The only problem: safety. When the girls went up to bat, Ryan says, “they’d balance their helmets on top of their heads, because they didn’t want to snag their ponytails.”

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“I THOUGHT I was a boy until I turned 12,” recalls Pamela Ryan, 42, an inventor and a mother of three girls. These days, as Rosie the Riveter’s granddaughters take to the playing fields, such dreams no longer sound so farfetched. To support her daughters in the sport of their choice, Ms. Ryan has developed and marketed a batter’s helmet for women. The helmet, made with a special “channel” to accommodate a ponytail, is one of five finalists in the 1999 Nasdaq/Amex Sports Product of the Year contest.

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