Bemidji's Miikawaadizi Novak to play soccer at Iowa Central College

Miikawaadizi Novak’s next step runs straight from Bemidji’s youth fields to the college game. The Bemidji High School senior and enrolled member of the Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe will continue her soccer career and education at Iowa Central Community College in Fort Dodge, Iowa, carrying a path that began when she started playing at about age 4 with Bemidji Youth Soccer.

For Beltrami County, Novak’s commitment is about more than one roster spot. It shows how a local girls soccer pipeline, built through youth leagues, school soccer and club play, can carry a Native student-athlete into college athletics. Novak said she has played varsity soccer since her sophomore year at Bemidji High, where the program has won conference championships in 2023, 2024 and 2025.

Novak, known as Miika, said her Ojibwe name, Miikawaadizi, means “to be beautiful,” and that her we’eh named her Niigaanibik, meaning “the one who leads.” She said she is from the Bear clan and also has family ties to the Oneida tribe in Wisconsin and the Akimel O’odham from the Gila River Indian Community in Arizona. That background places her college move within a broader story of Indigenous visibility in northern Minnesota prep sports, where young athletes are increasingly seeing a path to higher education through athletics.

Her route to Iowa Central was shaped by more than one season of high school play. Novak said she played club soccer from November to July and spent the 2025 season with Zolos FC MN, practicing in Alexandria and Brainerd with teammates from across northern Minnesota. In Bemidji High’s lineup, she said her role expanded over time from scoring multiple goals in earlier seasons to providing assists and corner kicks in her senior year.

Novak also built a multi-sport identity that reflects the range many local families recognize in Bemidji athletes. She said she started playing hockey at age 10 and later skated on a boys’ team when she was 12. Outside of sports, she has modeled for Indigenous photographers and Indigenous brands and traveled to Montana, Oregon and South Dakota for that work.

Iowa Central says it offers more than 100 programs, and its athletics department describes its mission as pairing high athletic performance with quality educational opportunity. The college’s 2026-27 academic calendar lists the first day of fall classes as Aug. 24, 2026, marking the start of Novak’s next chapter after a Bemidji career that has helped set the standard for younger Indigenous athletes coming through the region.