Local Hockey Player Moving to Iowa to Pursue Dream

Josh Nenadal has been skating since he was 3 years old. 

The 17-year-old said his grandfather and uncle first took him to a rink when he was 3, and he was able to skate on that first trip. He soon got started playing hockey and hasn’t looked back since. 

“I enjoy the competition,” he said. 

Nenadal’s father, David Nenadal, said his son started playing hockey in Garfield Heights at age 4. He continued playing there until he was 10 or 11, at which time he tried out for a local traveling team, where he got the opportunity to play in places like Pennsylvania, Maryland and Virginia and even Moscow one year.

All that traveling may have prepared Josh Nenadal for his next step – moving to Iowa to play with the Waterloo Black Hawks, a part of United States Hockey League.

The high school senior will live with a host family and attend his last year of high school out there.  

”It was one of my dreams to get into this league,” Nenadal said.

Up until this point, Nenadal attended Brecksville-Broadview Heights High School and played with the Cleveland Barons, an AAA team. Nenadal plays Right Wing.

Lynne Nenadal, Josh Nenadal’s mother, said the Waterloo team is a higher level of competition, and it’s the league where college and National Hockey League scouts are likely to watch. 

Josh Nenadal said he’d like to pursue the sport as far as it will take him, and he’s really hoping for a college scholarship. 

Nenadal’s father said that if a hockey player wants to succeed, “this is how you do it.”

“He’s excited as heck,” David Nenadal continued. “I’m excited for him.” 

He also pointed out that his son already knows some of the other athletes on the team from a national hockey camp that Josh Nenadal qualified for the past three years. 

Lynne Nenadal said in an email that the family would be leaving for Iowa on Monday for the team’s summer orientation camp and that her son would start school in mid-August. The team’s season officially begins later this fall.