“I was about 4 years old when I took my first steps on the ice,” junior Andrew Knapp said. 

Ever since he was little, Knapp has found himself drawn to the game of hockey. 

“I started playing competitively around seven or eight. It’s been nonstop ever since,” he said. 

While high school hockey has been fun, Knapp finds himself ready to do more. And that opportunity showed itself in the form of the North American Hockey League (NAHL). 

“The past four or five years, it’s something I’ve been working towards. And this year, I’ve just been having a really good year with my other club team besides Lafayette. And so when I started getting a few offers from multiple teams around the country, and right before Christmas break, and so it’s shocking to me. But it’s also well deserving and I’m thankful for that,” he said. 

NAHL is a junior hockey league that contains four divisions and 29 teams, the location of each team could be all over the country. Specifically for Knapp, he has been signed to the St. Cloud Norsemen. 

“When the hockey season ends, I’ll be here during the summer at home. But when the hockey season starts, I think probably around August or September, I’ll be moving up to Minnesota. Throughout the year, I’ll probably come back home for Christmas break, stuff like that. But for the duration of the season. I’ll be in Minnesota.” he said. 

Due to the location of the team, Knapp would have to live with a host family during his playing time.

So how that whole process works is my parents can still stay here at home, they can come out and watch my games, whenever what happens is I get placed with what’s called a billet family. And so it can be kind of nerve wracking, but it’s just a whole different family that I’ll be living with. They’ll be taking care of me. And I mean, I can still get myself to the rink for practices and games, but just somewhere to stay and live through the season,” he said. 

Even though hockey still holds a lot of importance to him, Knapp still has something that is more important than time on the ice. 

“ School is always number one priority. Hockey will stop if I can’t get the school done. That’s always been a priority with my parents and I education number one, but if I yeah, my goal is to do school while I’m playing hockey. In Minnesota. I’ll take the online courses through Lafayette or whatever website it is. I’ll take the courses through there during the season of hockey,” he said. 

And still with goals of playing in college, there are still a couple things that have to be done. 

“So right now I’m still trying to figure out how my schedule is gonna look like because as of now the only class I had to take was language arts for half a semester next year. And then I would graduate early. But I still have to go through a counselor here and go through what’s I think it’s called clearing house. And what that does is it tells me the credits that I need in every subject for me to be able to graduate, not just through my school, but that’s eligible for NCAA because with this hockey, the league that I’m going to they call it juniors. It’s kind of like the bridge between that or what I play now to college hockey, and college hockey is my end goal or wherever I can get to from there. But with the NCAA Clearinghouse, it’ll tell me the credits I need to be able to play for like an NCAA division one college, which is really cool,” he said. 

With still a long way to go, this hockey players future looks bright for the years ahead. 

“This is something that I’ve always been wanting to make a career out of. I spent day after days, like 5:30 in the morning skating on the ice and I’ve put a lot of hard work and dedication into the game. And so there have been times or things are on the low and you think about like ‘man do I really want to do this still’, but I’ve always looked back at it and thought that I put too much work into this for me to just stop. So really my goal like I said for college hockey is where I want to go to but ultimately it’s just I just want to see how far I can get into this and who knows maybe I turned professional into it but that’s that’s my goal,” Knapp said.