Colin Fowles

Fowles attended Long Island University-Brooklyn from 1972 to 1975 where he played forward on the men's soccer team. He scored 24 goals over his four season with the team.

In 1976, he was taken by the Tampa Bay Rowdies as the 19th overall pick of the North American Soccer League draft.[1] In 1977, the Fort Lauderdale Strikers signed Fowles for the team's first season. He played with the team through 1983, its last season in Fort Lauderdale. Over his seven seasons with the Strikers, he played 140 games and scored six goals. After the Strikers moved to Minnesota in 1984, Fowles remained in Florida and played for the Fort Lauderdale Sun of the United Soccer League. In 1985, the Sun was renamed the South Florida Sun, but the team and the league folded after only six games into the season. Fowles was known as the fastest player in the NASL. He once raced a quarterhorse over 80 yards and won.[2]

Fowles earned his first cap when he came on for Gary Etherington in a 2-1 victory over El Salvador on 15 September 1977. He played all eight U.S. games that year at forward, but never found the net. Beginning in 1978, the U.S. coaching staff moved Fowles to defense where he played all three games that year.[3] He continued to play sporadically through 1979 and 1980 with his last cap coming in the last U.S. game of 1980.[4] Fowled earned a total of 18 caps, between 1977 and 1980, but scored no goals.

Fowles continued to live in the Fort Lauderdale area where he played recreational soccer with the Lauderhill Men's Soccer club. On 29 August 1985, he was playing a game of pick up soccer at a north Dade County park when an argument broke out some distance away. One of the men involved in the argument pulled a pistol and began shooting wildly both at the other people involved in the argument as well as other people in the park. Fowles was struck by the gunfire and died.[5]

The Florida Sun posthumously inducted Fowles into its Hall of Fame in 1986.

• NASL stats