Quick Facts
Biography
Colin Fowles (6 August 1953 − 1 September 1985) was a Jamaican-American soccer player who died as a result of random gunfire while playing recreational soccer. He played professionally in the North American Soccer League and United Soccer League.
Youth
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.
Professional
In 1976, he was taken by the Tampa Bay Rowdies as the 19th overall pick of the North American Soccer League draft. 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.
National team
Fowles earned his first cap when he came on for Gary Etherington in a 2-1 victory over El Salvador on September 15, 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. He continued to play sporadically through 1979 and 1980 with his last cap coming in the last U.S. game of 1980. Fowled earned a total of 18 caps, between 1977 and 1980, but scored no goals.
Death
Fowles continued to live in the Fort Lauderdale area where he played recreational soccer with the Lauderhill Men’s Soccer club. On September 1, 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.
The Florida Sun posthumously inducted Fowles into its Hall of Fame in 1986.