College Skotarek attended
Michigan State University where he played on the men's soccer team. He is tied for seventh on Michigan State's season assists list with nine in 1968. That season, Michigan State and Maryland were declared co-champions in the
NCAA Men's Soccer Championship after the game remained tied at 2–2 after two overtimes.
Club career Following college, Skotarek pursued a professional career in Europe. He spent at least the 1971 and 1972 seasons with Dutch
First Division club
MVV Maastricht. Prior to the 1973 season, he was transferred from MVV to a Belgian club from
Diepenbeek. In 1975, he returned to the U.S. and signed with the
Chicago Sting of the
North American Soccer League (NASL). He spent three seasons in Chicago before being traded to the
Tulsa Roughnecks. He then played with the Roughnecks from 1978 through 1981. However, in 1981, he saw time in only one game and retired from playing professional soccer.
National team Skotarek played ten times for the
U.S. national team in 1975 and 1976. Skotarek's first game with the national team came on August 19, 1975, in a 3–1 loss to
Mexico. He played one more game that year, another loss to Mexico six days later. His next eight games all came in 1976, five of them were first-round qualification games for the
1978 FIFA World Cup. However, the U.S. was eliminated after losing 3–0 to
Canada in a tiebreaker game played in
Haiti. Skotarek was also on the Team America roster for the
USA Bicentennial Cup which pitted a mixture of U.S. national team players and NASL stars against the national teams of England, Brazil and Italy. ==Coach and general manager==