  NOvA is a long-baseline neutrino oscillation experiment that will use the
NuMI beam originating at Fermilab. NOvA enables the study of two oscillation
channels: $\nu_{\mu}$ disappearance and $\nu_{e}$ appearance. It consists of
two functionally identical detectors, the near detector (ND) at Fermilab and
the far detector (FD) near International Falls in Northern Minnesota. The ND
will be used to study the neutrino beam spectrum and composition before
oscillation, and measure background rate to the $\nu_e$ appearance search. In
this paper, I describe a data-driven technique to estimate the neutral current
(NC) component of the ND spectrum. Using the $\nu_{\mu}$ CC interactions where
the reconstructed muon is removed from the event, we produce a well understood
sample of hadronic showers that resemble NC interactions.
