Wisconsin Badgers

Nate Boyden begins his first year as an assistant coach with Wisconsin men's soccer.

He arrives in Madison from the Chicago Fire Football Club, where he completed his second stint with the club. As the Fire's Youth Technical Director, Boyden developed curriculum for the Fire's youth programs, coached within the Fire academy, created programming for player identification and scouting and served as interim Academy Technical Director for the fall season of 2022. During Boyden's first stint with the Fire, from 2016-2019, he served as an academy head coach where he coached and helped develop Fire academy Homegrown players such as Brian Gutierrez, Gabriel Slonina and Chris Brady. In the 2018 season, Boyden served as a part-time Assistant on the First Team staff of Head Coach, Veljko Paunovic.
 
The Davis, California native went back home from 2019-2021 where he served as technical director and ECNL team coach of Davis Legacy Soccer Club. At Davis, he oversaw the technical direction of a club with 51 youth teams and approximately 40 coaches, and led their high school boys' team to a successful transition to the Elite Clubs National League (ECNL).
 
Boyden also boasts collegiate coaching experience, having spent time as an assistant coach and associate head coach with current UW head coach Neil Jones at Loyola Chicago from 2013-16. He helped the program reach a No. 7 national ranking and a Missouri Valley Conference title in 2016 during his time with the Ramblers. The staff was named 2016 Missouri Valley Conference Coaching Staff of the Year that season.
 
He also spent time as an assistant coach at Bradley University from 2012-13, and as a volunteer assistant coach while a graduate student at the University of Michigan with the women's team under head coach Greg Ryan from 2011-12.
 
A teammate of current head coach Jones at the University of California, Santa Barbara when he attended from 2001-05, he helped UCSB finish as the 2004 NCAA runners-up. He was twice named Big West Conference First Team while playing for the Gauchos and was inducted into the school's hall of fame in 2014.
 
He went on to play two years with the Seattle Sounders, where he won a USL championship in 2006, and he played as a reserve player for Chivas USA, formerly of MLS. Boyden also played overseas for Rostocker FC of the German Verbandsliga in 2008 and 2009, as well as for the Michigan Bucks (now Flint City) of the PDL in 2010.
 
Boyden earned a degree from UCSB, graduating with high honors in psychology, with a minor in sports management. He also earned a master's degree in psychology while pursuing his PhD from the University of Michigan. Boyden was awarded a Graduate Research Fellowship from the National Science Foundation and is a published author in the Journal of Quantitative Analysis in Sports, the Journal of Neurophysiology, and the Oxford Handbook of Cognitive Neuroscience.