Thomas Gardiner is a retired American

soccer Association football, more commonly known as football or soccer, is a team sport played between two teams of 11 Football player, players who almost exclusively use their feet to propel a Ball (association football), ball around a rectangular f ...

player who played professionally in the Major Indoor Soccer League and was a member of the U.S. team at the

1981 FIFA World Youth Championship The 1981 FIFA World Youth Championship, the third edition of the FIFA World Youth Championship, was held in Australia from 3 to 18 October 1981. The tournament took place in across venues in Adelaide, Brisbane, Canberra, Melbourne, Newcastle an ...

. Gardiner graduated from

RHAM High School RHAM High School (Regional Hebron, Andover, and Marlborough) is a regional public high school located in Hebron Hebron (; , or ; , ) is a Palestinian city in the southern West Bank, south of Jerusalem. Hebron is capital of the Hebr ...

where he was an outstanding soccer player. A member of the 1977 Connecticut High School championship soccer team, he was a 1979 High School All American. In 1980, Gardiner played a single season with the

Southern Connecticut State University Southern Connecticut State University (Southern Connecticut, Southern Connecticut State, SCSU, or simply "Southern") is a public research university in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Part of the Connecticut State University System, it ...

men's soccer team before leaving the team to concentrate on preparations for the

. Gardiner played all three U.S. games in that tournament. In the fall of 1981, he signed with the Philadelphia Fever of the Major Indoor Soccer League but tore is

medial collateral ligament The medial collateral ligament (MCL), also called the superficial medial collateral ligament (sMCL) or tibial collateral ligament (TCL), is one of the major ligaments of the knee. It is on the medial (inner) side of the knee joint and occurs in ...

after playing only one game. As he recovered from that surgery, he suffered a career ending ankle injury in 1982. He was inducted into the Connecticut Soccer Hall of Fame in 2008.

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MISL stats
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Gardiner, Tom 1962 births Living people People from Hebron, Connecticut# Soccer players from Connecticut American men's soccer players Major Indoor Soccer League (1978–1992) players Philadelphia Fever (MISL) players Southern Connecticut Owls men's soccer players United States men's under-20 international soccer players Men's association football defenders 20th-century American sportsmen Sportspeople from Tolland County, Connecticut