SARNIA, Ont. (CP) -- Hayley Wickenheiser has discovered that a two-sport woman lives out of a suitcase.

 For the last three months, when the 21-year-old hasn't been on the ice, she's been on the softball field or in the air travelling.

 A week after the women's world hockey championship ends April 9 in Mississauga, Ont., Wickenheiser, a forward on the Canadian women's team, heads for Sydney, Australia with the Canadian softball team for a pre-Olympic tournament.

 The 15-woman softball team that will represent Canada at the Olympic Games in Sydney in September will be selected after that tournament.

 Wickenheiser is just two cuts away from making the team, which would make her only the second Canadian woman to participate in both a summer and winter Olympic Games since Sue Holloway competed in the 1976 Olympics in cross-country skiing and in the 1994 Games in kayaking.

 Wickenheiser's hockey-softball season has seen her criss-cross the continent from the hockey team's evaluation camp and exhibition tour in Toronto in January to San Diego, Calif., in February, where she made the first cut at the softball team's training camp, to Sydney, N.S., earlier this month where she helped her club hockey team win bronze at the Canadian women's championship.

 She has often commuted this winter between Vancouver, where she plays softball for Simon Fraser University, to Calgary, to play for her club team, the Calgary Oval X-treme.

 "I haven't spent as much time on hockey this year, there's no question," said Wickenheiser. "My focus has probably been more on softball at times.

 "But I knew that coming in. I kind of had a picture in my mind of what it was going to be like and it's been pretty close."

 Wickenheiser, along with Cassie Campbell and Geraldine Heaney, is one of the most famous players on the women's hockey team.

 The native of Shaunavon, Sask., is Canada's all-time points leader, played in her first world championship at the age of 15 and at 19, helped lead Canada to the silver medal at the 1998 Olympics. She has also attended the Philadelphia Flyers rookie camp twice.

 So why the need to branch off into softball?

 "I've always loved the game and would probably regret not doing it while I'm young and just to see how it could work," said Wickenheiser.

 The greatest danger with juggling two sports has been overtaxing herself in training.

 "There's been a few times where I've started to get run down," she said. "I actually haven't been sick or injured at all this year.

 "When I feel it, I have no problem taking a couple of days off and really doing nothing and I feel OK with it, whereas in the past I wouldn't."

 At the hockey team's training camp in Sarnia, Ont., this week, she recruited teammates Campbell and Kelly Bechard to hit balls to her before hockey practice.

 Hockey coach Melody Davidson supports Wickenheiser's decision to pursue a spot on the softball team.

 "The only thing I asked of her is to continue to communicate and if she decided softball was something she wanted to pursue, our program would support that," said Davidson.

 "She's a great hockey player, but she's also a good softball player. She's a great ambassador for sports so you have to support those types of decisions."

 Wickenheiser is a utility player who can handle both infield and outfield duties.

 Her chances of making the softball team will depend mostly on her bat. Wickenheiser has worked on her hitting every day this winter.

 "It's just repetition. That's all hitting is," she said. "And confidence in the batter's box. It's totally mental."

 Training for one sport helps in the other, she said, and she has found that trying out for the softball team has given her a new perspective on hockey.

 "In softball, I'm a rookie again," she said. "It's all the same feelings you get when you're a player on the bubble and not sure if you're going to make the team.

 "You question your ability too much and sometimes you over-analyse things. It's really helped me in my hockey career to come back and understand what it's like."

 Holloway won a bronze and silver medal in kayaking in '94. With Wickenheiser's silver from 1998, she already has half of the equation in a bid to become the first Canadian to win a medal at both Games.

 "In softball, there's definitely the potential to medal," said Wickenheiser. "The question may be the colour of the medal.

 "I think in the past softball's mentality has been maybe focusing on just being there.

 "In hockey, we go there to win. And I think that's something I can bring to softball."