Head coach Raphael Nascimento became MCC’s fourth head soccer coach in the spring of 2020. Returning to MCC after playing and as a past assistant soccer coach. 

Nascimento was born in Boston, Massachusetts and traveled to Brazil when he was only 6 months old. He grew up and spent all of his childhood in Belo Horizonte, Brazil. That is where he learned the love and passion of soccer in the country that breathes soccer 24 hours. At the age of 9, he was scouted to play for America Mineiro and spent 6 years at the club before transferring to Clube Atletico Mineiro for 1 year before returning to America Mineiro for 2 more years.

In 2010 he had the opportunity of being part of Ipatinga Futebol Clube, a team that was part of Serie A national division in Brazil that year, during the first semester before deciding to move to the USA during the fall of that year.

His student/athlete career started at the age of 19, in Iowa and it couldn’t be in any other college but Marshalltown Community College with the Tigers. He spent two completely different seasons at MCC, in 2010/11 my first season, playing 14 games, starting 9 of them and scoring 3 goals. In 2011/12, he was nominated the captain, but unfortunately, was only able to play 1 game because of his ACL which led him to having a surgery that year. 2012/13 season he transferred to AIB College of Business, but his best seasons were yet to arrive. 2013/14 moved to Grand View University in Des Moines IA and was part of a team that were ranked #1 in the nation before moving to Nationals. And his senior year with GVU was a huge accomplishment by going a second time to Nationals and finishing 6^thplace in 2014/15 season.

After graduating in 2015 Nascimento moved to Florida to continue my playing career. He played with the semi pro team Tampa Marauders FC before being invited to be part of the Tampa Bay Rowdies in 2016 in the NASL. Played at the NPSL with the Rowdies 2 before starting my indoor soccer career. Indoor he played with the Florida Tropics SC in 2016/17, which gave him the opportunity to travel to Barcelona, Spain to play with the FC Martinenc in the First Catalan Division for their remaining season of 2017. Came back to Des Moines for the summer and had the opportunity of playing with the Des Moines Menace for the second time in 2017 (the first was in 2012). After that he decided to only play indoor in the USA and in 2018 and played with St Louis Ambush.

With everyday life events occurring, he decided to take a year off from playing and got the chance to come back where everything started for him, MCC. 2018/19 season he was able to focus on coaching in a higher level and received the opportunity of being an assistant coach at MCC where he was able to get the opportunity to learn from two amazing coaches, Rafael Martinez and Chris Fuchsen. During this season we won the ICCAC Conference title and finished 5^that the NJCAA-1 National Tournament.

Unfortunately, 2019/20 season he couldn’t be a part of MCC since he got the opportunity of coming back to Florida to play professional indoor again with the Orlando Seawolves. Now he is excited to be back in the city of Marshalltown and part of Marshalltown Community College to bring his expertise to the soccer program with the support of his two kids, Bella and Neo.