Charlie MacDonald in his third season as an assistant coach under head coach Eric Thurston for the men’s and women’s swimming & diving programs in 2026-27.
MacDonald helped the 2025-26 Babson men's team to an 8-1 dual meet record, its highest winning percentage (.889) since the 1972-73 squad finished 13-1 (.929), and just the fourth time in program history with a dual-meet winning percentage above .800. The Babson women finished with a 7-4-1 record in 2025-26, reaching seven victories for just the ninth time in the 38-year history of the program. The women broke seven program records in 2025-26 (four individual, three relay) and the men set one new individual and one relay standard this past winter.
McDonald helped the Beavers to an outstanding campaign in 2024-25. The men's squad finished 7-3 in dual meet competition before finishing fourth at the New England Women's and Men's Athletic Conference (NEWMAC) Championships with 704 points, the third highest point total going back to 2002. The women's team finished 8-5 in dual meets, posting the most wins since the 2019-20 season, and placed seventh at the NEWMAC Championships with 416 points, the highest in program history. The two teams combined for 18 school records in 2024-25, 12 by the men and six by the women.
MacDonald came to Babson in 2024 after spending five seasons as an assistant coach at Bridgewater State University. He helped the Bears’ men’s squad capture their first conference title at the Little East Championship in 2022.
A 2015 graduate of Bridgwater State, MacDonald spent the 2015-16 season as an assistant coach at his alma mater and spent the 2016-17 campaign as an assistant at Tufts University before being named head women’s swimming & diving coach at Cedar Crest College in 2017. He was selected as the Northeast Athletic Conference (NEAC) Coach of the Year in both 2018 and 2019 while leading the Hawks to a pair of top-three finishes.
A four-year member of the men’s swimming & diving program at Bridgewater State, MacDonald was a two-year captain for the Bears as they won three straight Steve Looke Sportsmanship awards (2013-15) from the New England Intercollegiate Swimming & Diving Association. The President of the BSU Athletics Captain’s Council as a senior, MacDonald also was the recipient of the Lee Harrington Unsung Hero Award to the 2015 BSU Athletics Banquet.
A native of Braintree, Mass., MacDonald earned his master’s degree from Bridgewater State in 2021. He currently works as a science teacher at the Dexter Southfield School and lives in Dedham with his wife Meredith.
