Charlie
MacCabe
Team Administrator / Assistant Head Coach
Charlie MacCabe’s involvement with Tucson soccer dates to the early 1980s when he began his coaching career with Tucson United Soccer Club while attending graduate school at the University of Arizona. After a short, but successful, tour of duty at Sahuaro High School, where his boys’ team won a state championship in 1988.
MacCabe had a five-year stint as an assistant coach at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. At UNC, he received his USSF “A” license and had the privilege of working with men’s coach Elmar Bolowich, and legendary women’s coach Anson Dorrance, whose teams have won 21 NCAA Division I Championships.
In 1995, MacCabe became head coach of the new women’s soccer program at the University of Tennessee. In 2000, MacCabe returned to Tucson and helped found the Tucson Soccer Academy (TSA), where he has played an integral role in helping the fledgling organization grow to become one of the premier youth soccer organizations in the Southwest. Over the last 20 years, MacCabe has coached boys and girls in virtually every age group from U-10 to U-19. More recently, he has been one of the key figures in the development of Tucson’s Women’s Premier Soccer League franchise, first under the name TSAFC, and since 2015 as FC Tucson Women. MacCabe also serves as TSA’s scholarship program coordinator and on its board of directors, and as PacSouth commissioner for the WPSL.
MacCabe graduated from Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, where he was a co-captain and played in three NCAA tournaments and one national semifinal. Over the last 18 years he has been teaching geography, political science, and history at Pima Community College. His wife Melissa Halpern, an immunologist, is an Associate Research Professor in pediatrics at the University of Arizona, and his son Ryan works for Mount Lemmon Ski Valley. Melissa and Charlie have two dogs, two cats, and one desert tortoise.