This offer excludes Travel Uniform components. These items must be placed through your manager.

Cutters Soccer Club has joined with Eurosport Soccer. Every time you use the links provided on the Cutters Webpage to order soccer equipment (balls, bags, cleats, etc)
Cutters gets in on the profit!

So use the link to order equipment and help the club earn some money, You will benefit from Eurosport Soccer's huge inventory and excellent customer service. Thanks and happy shopping.

Why volunteer?

Our Cutters Soccer Club needs volunteers to help support the many activities in which it is involved. From the perspective of the parent, the purpose of all these activities may not always be clear. Having once been a parent new to organized soccer, I know it is not always easy to understand either the scope of the program or the reasons things are done the way they are.

The explosion of youth soccer in America over the past 25 years has been reflected in Bloomington and in the surrounding areas. Over the course of a calendar year, Cutters Soccer Club has over 900 players, from 5-year olds in Cutters Academy to adults on the Cutters Men’s team. Not surprisingly, these active participants reflect a wide range of abilities and interest. It is our goal to provide a level of play that is appropriate for every player so they will have an enjoyable experience and develop a life-long love of The Great Game and a life-long habit of healthy physical activity.

To meet that goal, we need a large number of players at many levels of development. In the Cutters Academy, for example, at least four teams are needed in an age group to avoid the boredom of playing the same teams over and over. The more teams there are, the more fun it is. With enough teams, we could even have different levels within the recreation program so that players are playing with others of the same developmental level. It’s no fun to play on a team where the other players are at a different level, or to play against a team of a different level. Similarly, in Cutters travel soccer, the goal is to have enough players so that each team has players of approximately equal development, instead of a wide range of development.

Cutters Soccer Club, a not-for profit organization, would like to serve every player in the area, from the beginner to the elite player. As the number of players has grown year after year, we have come closer to achieving these goals, but we are not yet there. We need to develop more outreach programs to introduce more children to this wonderful game, not only because we think it would be a positive experience for them but also to better serve those children who are already playing soccer. The more players there are, the greater the likelihood that your child will play on a team most suited to his or her developmental level.

It takes many hundreds of hours of work to provide the organization necessary for your officially-sanctioned soccer player to step onto a properly prepared field and play at an expected time and place, in a uniform, in most cases with referees, with appropriate supervision, playing at a developmentally appropriate level, having received the highest quality of appropriate training available. Volunteers perform the bulk of the work. We currently have one paid part-time over-all administrator and two interns to help with Cutters Academy. Academy age-group trainers, travel coaches, and the Director of Coaching are paid. Everything else is done by volunteers.

The growth of soccer has also put enormous pressure on the fields at Karst Farm Park. Travel soccer players and parents know that we play on some of the best fields in the state. To stay in playable condition, they need to rest from time to time. With the demands of so many players, it is difficult to rotate them to give them the rest they need. That is why Cutters Soccer Club contributed $20,000 towards the construction of field 7, which should be playable in spring 2006. There is enough land at Karst to build seven more full-size fields, along with parking on the west side of the park. Building a proper field, with drainage and irrigation, can cost as much as $120,000 per field (without lights), money that Monroe County Parks & Rec does not have. Cutters Soccer Club is working to get a long-term use agreement with Monroe County. When that is done, we will launch a capital campaign to raise money for capital improvements at Karst, including more fields. More fields will allow us to expand all our programs, continue to play on premier fields, and practice at Karst; in short, to have an all-inclusive home. We will be able to host more soccer events each of which will be able to encompass an ever-wider constituency, giving our players more activities at home, raising money to build and maintain fields, and enhancing our reputation around the state. The process, managed properly, can improve in a self-sustaining manner.

Finally, our coaches and age-group trainers are talented and dedicated. They give much of their time and energy for less pay than they could get elsewhere – in Indianapolis, for example. To retain and attract quality coaches, we have to pay them more. We could do that by raising fees, but we would much prefer to use fundraising to help reach that goal. Cutters Soccer Club believes soccer should be available to everyone that is interested; we don’t want to price anyone out of the opportunity to play. For that reason, we also need to fund scholarships for those that can’t pay the full fees.

Every time your child steps out onto a soccer field, he or she is there because a lot of people dedicated a lot of time to make it possible. It simply can’t happen without a lot of volunteer help. Please volunteer. We need you.

Mary Runnells

President