St. Louis Kutis S.C.

St. Louis Kutis Soccer Club, better known as St. Louis Kutis, is an amateur U.S. club in St. Louis, Missouri. The club gained its greatest prominence in the 1950s when it dominated both St. Louis and national soccer competitions. In 1958, the United States Soccer Federation used Kutis, with a few guest players, as the U.S. national team in two World Cup qualifying matches.

Origins

In 1953, Tom Kutis, owner of the Kutis Funeral Home, became the sponsor of the St. Louis Raiders Soccer Club. Raiders had a long pedigree as a successful amateur club and this tradition continued under the club’s new ownership. Typically amateur clubs sponsored by local businessmen will take on the name of their sponsor or their sponsor’s business. Raiders was no different and when Tom Kutis became the team’s sponsor, the team was renamed St. Louis Kutis Soccer Club. Some periodicals refer to Kutis as the Undertakers but this was not a common practice.

When Kutis took on his new team, he made a deliberate decision to stock his team with local talent. Fortunately for Kutis, St. Louis had one of the richest pools of soccer talent in the U.S. Kutis didn’t stop there, but also decided to sponsor three additional clubs, one adult, one for teenagers and one for boys age seven to ten. In this way, he created a club farm system which fed players to his senior team. On a side note, Kutis also sponsored several bowling, baseball, softball and basketball teams at the time.

"Kutis circa 1954"

Years of dominance

In its first year in existence, Kutis won the St. Louis Major Soccer League title with a 12-1-3 record. In addition, the club’s lower division team took the St. Louis Municipal League Championship title. While Kutis entered the U.S. Open Cup for the first time, it was an inauspicious start. The team defeated the Chicago Falcons 2-0. However the Falcons managed to show that Kutis had used ineligible players. In the replay, Kutis and Chicago played first to a scoreless tie, then in the third match, Chicago overcame Kutis 2-1. Chicago then went on to win the Open Cup.

In 1954, the St. Louis Major Soccer League folded and was replaced by the St. Louis Municipal League, formerly the lower competition, as the city’s highest league. Since Kutis had fielded a team in both leagues in 1953, the club decided to place both in the Municipal league. The top Kutis club took the North Division title and the overall league title while the reserve team was second in the South Division. This year, Kutis made it to the Open Cup Final, before falling 1-0 and 2-0 to the professional New York Americans. They also lost the National Challenge Cup to the Americans.

The Municipal League folded at the end of the 1954 season, to be replaced by the Khoury League. However, Kutis decided to withdraw his club from league play and field it as an independent team playing an exhibition schedule only. While this schedule featured teams mainly from St. Louis and Chicago, Kutis also took on Nuremberg (a 3-2 victory).

Despite not playing in an organized league for the rest of the decade, Kutis rose to become one of the dominant teams on a national level. They went on to win the National Amateur Cup six consecutive years (1956-1961) and were perennial contenders for the U.S. Open Cup, finally winning the title in 1957.

In 1960, one of the Kutis club teams won the St. Louis Municipal League title.

In 1964 and 1965, the Junior Team took the National Junior Cup titles.

Kutis as the U.S. National Team

In 1958, the success of Kutis was such that the U.S. Soccer Federation chose it to represent the U.S. in the two World Cup qualifying matches that year.

Years of decline

Kutis continued to find success into the late 1960s, mostly in the National Amateur Cup. However, by the late 1960s, the rise first of the National Professional Soccer League then its successor league, the North American Soccer League, saw the rapid rise in professional U.S. soccer. By the early 1970s a local amateur club such as Kutis could no longer compete successfully.

Brief resurgance

The collapse of the NASL in the early 1980s, accompanied by the collapse of the American Soccer League, led to a brief resurgance of local and independent "super clubs" such as Kutis. This resurgance put them back into contention for the U.S. Cup in the mid and late 1980s, but as the various independent clubs began to coalesce into leagues, such as the Western Soccer League, third American Soccer League and the Lone Star Soccer Alliance, Kutis again faded from the national scene.

In 2007, Kutis forfeited its Open Cup qualifying game with AAFC Elite.

Record

Coaches

* Joe Carenza, Sr 1954-
* Jim Bokern 1986

Notable players

* Joe Carenza, Sr
* Bob Kehoe
* Harry Keough
* Bill Looby
* Ruben Mendoza
* Russ Murphy
* Denny Vaninger
* Herman Wecke

External links

* [http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,864189-1,00.html 1958 Times magazine article]