Peter Redman, National Post Not so long ago, Hayley Wickenheiser was dragging her teammates on Canada's hockey team outside to help her work on fly balls and grounders.

The first in an occasional series on Canada's Olympians prior to the Sydney Games.

She had only to read the first word on the letter from Softball Canada: Congratulations. One word, great meaning. Hayley Wickenheiser had been named to Canada's 2000 Olympic softball team.

And while the letter didn't delve into much more detail, it might well have gone on to say congratulations on being the first Canadian to compete in team competition at both the Summer and Winter Olympic Games.

It could have congratulated her for helping to shine a light on a program that had hitherto led a mushroom-like existence, and added more congratulations for ignoring the whispers and skeptical grumbling that accompanied her journey from celebrated Olympic hockey medallist to Olympic softball hopeful.

"It was just kind of a load off my shoulders," acknowledged Wickenheiser this week from Calgary. "It had been kind of a rocky road."

For Wickenheiser, 22, preparing physically for the team wasn't really an issue.

An extraordinary athlete who won silver with the Canadian women's hockey team in Nagano in 1998 and is a four-time world hockey champion, Wickenheiser was part of the women's national junior softball program in the mid-1990s playing in the junior world championships in 1995.

And although she'd been away from the program for years and began trying out for the national team last year as basically a rookie, coach Ron Clarke said Wickenheiser's work ethic and natural ability has helped her become a starter.

"She has one way," Clarke says. "She works very, very hard.

"This team needed a winner," says Clarke of a squad that should chase the Americans and Australians into the Sydney medal hunt.

With Wickenheiser's bid for a place on the Olympic softball team came intense media coverage.

Sue Holloway, who competed as a cross-country skier and as a kayaker, is the only Canadian woman to perform in Winter and Summer Games, but Wickenheiser was attempting to become the first to do so in team competition.

If she wins a medal, she would be the first Canadian to do so at both Games.

She has become a celebrity in a sport where the term does not exist.

"Everybody knows that we're a low-profile sport," says Clarke.

And so the questions dogged Clarke: Was Wickenheiser a stunt, and as she struggled early to hit top-notch pitching was she a convenient way to thrust the team into the public spotlight?

With solid play throughout the summer, including clutch hits at a top-level tournament in Brampton, Ont., Wickenheiser quietly buried those sentiments.

"I don't think that notion's out there any more," says Clarke. "I think it's been a tremendous thing for our sport."

Wickenheiser acknowledged that carving out a special place in Canadian Olympic lore is enticing.

"It's a factor, I'm not going to deny it," the quiet, confident Wickenheiser said. "I love being under pressure. I love winning."

Wickenheiser grew up in Shaunavon, Sask., a small farming community.

Her parents, Tom and Marilyn, both teachers, built a backyard rink and Wickenheiser figures she was on the blades at the age of three and played competitively with boys until she was 16 or 17.

"I ended up being the only girl from the age of nine on. And it didn't matter," Wickenheiser says.

"It was totally a natural thing to do."

A distant cousin of former NHLer Doug Wickenheiser, who died of cancer, she drifted into competitive women's hockey in the early 1990s and at 15 was at her first national team training camp.

Wickenheiser soon found herself playing against women twice her age, some of whom were teachers and could have been teaching their Grade 10 teammate.

She joined the national program in 1994 even though her parents felt she was too young to be away from home. She's been on the road ever since, helping give women's hockey an identity and now doing the same for softball.

After losing the gold medal game in Nagano, Wickenheiser found her thirst for competition, the desire to compete at this level, could not be slaked and she decided to try to make the Olympic softball team.

Soon she was working out for both sports, dragging her hockey teammates outside of whatever rink they were playing or training at to help her work on fly balls and grounders.

During a five-month period earlier this year she was home for 15 days.

Already, Wickenheiser has her eye on a possible showdown with the Americans.

At last year's Pan Am Games -- she didn't make Canada's team -- the U.S. beat Canada in extra innings to win the gold.

Wickenheiser, of course, carries the lasting, galling image of the American women's hockey team swarming each other after the gold medal game in Nagano.

"It's unfinished business for us," she says. "I guess it's a healthy obsession."

If there's something she's learned having been through the Nagano heartbreak, it's to enjoy the journey itself and not just focus on the big game. "It might have helped us in the end."

If there was any resentment among her softball teammates, that seems to have disappeared, even though the youngster is the most recognizable person, most interviewed member of the team.

Recently, one of her teammates was being interviewed and was asked about the hockey player.

"What hockey player?" she responded coyly.

Congratulations, Hayley Wickenheiser.