Born on April 29, 1983, Jay Cutler and long before he threw touchdown passes in the NFL, he was raised in the small Indiana town of the affectionate name Santa Claus, Indiana. As a high school student growing up in rural Indiana, Jay played football at Heritage Hills High School in Lincoln City, Indiana. Lincoln City and Santa Claus are both located in southern Indiana. Lincoln City is a short five mile drive east on Christmas Street. When he came from Santa Claus, Indiana, as the children in Santa Claus had to go to the nearest high school.

From an early age, Jay Cutler showed a lot of promise in throwing football. As a teenager playing for the Heritage Hills Patriots in Lincoln City, the Indiana Jays made their high school football team to a 15-0 record en route to winning a state championship during his senior season. In fact, over his last two seasons of high school football, the prep star led his team to an impressive 26-1 record as the starting quarterback.

During Cutler’s perfect season as a senior, the stats his team put up were downright impressive. In the course of a 15-win roll-up, the Patriots outpaced opponents by an average of 44 points per game. During the season, the team that Jay Cutler had scored 746 points while the opponents put up only 85 collegiate points in 15 games. Those numbers tied the Heritage Hills High School team Cutler played for scoring nearly 50 points per game while opposing offenses put up less than 6 points in the contest. Those lopsided averages were hit hard by a 90-0 win over the Pike Central Chargers of nearby Pike County, Indiana.

A contributing factor to the lopsided nature of these games was the fact that the Heritage Hills High School team not only had a future NFL quarterback under center, but also the level of competition was a far cry from what Cutler would have faced playing against competition in a more densely populated area. To illustrate the point, the Cutler-led Pike Central team that is famous for its 90-0 school enrollment totals just 672 students. Often times the power football players Cutler has faced against schools in a neighborhood with three or four times the student population of Pike Central.

For his efforts at quarterback Jay Cutler was awarded the Medal of Appreciation for being named first-team All-State during his senior year of high school. In addition to being a very solid player, the three-sport star also earned a first-team all-state selection in the sport of basketball as well as an All-State honorable mention for his performance as a player on his school’s baseball team.