Detroit Shock photo One of her multitude of pursuits, Swin Cash has done offseason work for ESPN.

Please pardon Swin Cash for missing the Dapper Dan festivities, where she will be honored for the second time since 2003 as Sportswoman of the Year.

But she is off doing what Swin Cash does best:

Chasing championships.

Not that she needs a note from her McKeesport mother, Cynthia Cash, with whom she still boards when spending chunks of time at home. But Cash has as her excuse this week a two-week exhibition schedule in Italy with the USA women's national team. It's one of the first steps for her to try to go for the gold once more, in the 2008 Olympics in Beijing.

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"You have a pool of 22 girls fighting for 12 spots," Cash said this past week, stopping back in Pittsburgh before leaving for Rome today. "If anything, I feel rejuvenated. After having a couple of injury-plagued seasons, it's great to get back out there and feel great."

This is all part of Cash's athletic foundation, the base of her basketball being. She plays for titles. At age 27, she already owns a pile of them.

Born Swintayla Marie Cash on Sept. 22, 1979, she arose to 6 feet 2 and stardom at McKeesport High, where she won the WPIAL Class AAAA championship in 1998, scoring a title-game record 40 points.

She won NCAA championships with the University of Connecticut in 2000 and 2002.

She won an Olympic gold medal with the U.S. women in 2004.

She won WNBA championships with the Detroit Shock in 2003 and 2006, making her one of just a half-dozen women on the planet to accomplish that women's hoops troika - NCAA, Olympics, WNBA.

Here's the new Cash deal: She's going for two in each, needing only 2008 Beijing gold to complete it.

"It seems like I win championships every other year," she said. "Can I get back-to-back championships, just to see how it feels? So I have a lot to shoot for."

She was a Parade and Street & Smith's All-America first-team at McKeesport, she was an all-Big East and All-America player at Connecticut, she was the No. 2 selection in the WNBA draft and all-WNBA, she is on her second U.S. national team. Yet she wants more. Cash is driven, indeed.

She is more than simply a basketball star, though. She is an ESPN announcer, the first female to analyze the all-male NBA on the network -- though the Italy trip means she'll take a broadcasting break until returning to work the NBA playoffs in May. (And, yes, the male players lash back: "I'll get text messages right after the show or even during the show.") She is a spokesperson and charity founder. She is a model and designer, proceeds from her clothing-line sales benefiting her Cash for Kids foundation.

Barely four weeks ago, that foundation along with her WNBA employer opened the Detroit Shock Resource Center at the Ferguson Academy for Young Women in Detroit, a school with more than 400 students who mostly have a child or are pregnant. Much like the students who can bring their child to that school, Cash brought along her mother, a former teenaged mother who spoke to the crowd.

"There are only three schools in the country like Ferguson," Cash said. "You can't throw these kids away and say they have no shot. Ferguson has a higher graduation rate than [many] public schools. A lot of these girls go on to college because they have structure in place. So this was important for my mom and I to do as a team."