Bucknell University Athletics
Jesse Klug Named Senior CLASS Award First Team All-American
12/10/2015 12:12:00 PM | Men's Soccer
LEWISBURG, Pa. -- Senior Jesse Klug, who had been one of 10 finalists for the prestigious Senior CLASS Award for men's soccer, was named a Senior CLASS First Team All-American on Thursday. Ohio State's Zach Mason earned the top honor, while Klug's First Team selection puts him in the top five nationally among men's soccer student-athletes judged in four areas of excellence: community, classroom, character and competition.
Klug was named one of 30 candidates for the award back in September. The list was narrowed to 10 in late-October, and the award winner and All-America teams were then chosen by a vote of Division I men's soccer coaches, national soccer media and fans. An acronym for Celebrating Loyalty and Achievement for Staying in School®, the Senior CLASS Award focuses on the total student-athlete in 10 NCAA sports and encourages students to use their platform in athletics to make a positive impact as leaders in their communities.
Klug has certainly done that during his time at Bucknell. A managing for sustainability major with a 3.65 cumulative grade-point average, Klug has piled up the scholar-athlete honors this fall. He was selected as a national CoSIDA Academic All-American for the second year in a row, and he was named the Patriot League Scholar-Athlete of the Year for men's soccer.
He has won the Charles F. White Prize for Scholar-Athletes and the ECAC Merit Award, and he is in Mortar Board and Omicron Delta Kappa (service chair) honor societies.
Klug's academic focus is on economic and socio-cultural issues, and he is pursuing a minor in social justice. During the 2015 spring semester he studied in Guatemala, Costa Rica and Nicaragua as part of a program called Social Change in Central America: Exploring Peace, Justice and Community Engagement.
In October 2013, Klug wrote an article for Outsports.com entitled, “Open Letter on Homosexuality.” The thoughtful piece detailed his experiences as a gay student-athlete and, as the No. 3 most-read article on Outsports.com in 2013, it was picked up by the Huffington Post, The Advocate, OUT Magazine and others.
Klug is one of the foremost LGBTQ activists on the Bucknell campus. He has been involved with programs such as Sophomore LEAD (Leading, Engaged, Active, Determined) and Net Impact, a networking program for which he was a co-founder and executive board member with the Bucknell chapter. In 2014, Klug was selected as one of 12 “Leaders in Action” nationwide, as an activist promoting social justice and inclusion on college campuses. He attended a Creating Change Conference in Houston, Texas, and was a panelist for a Campus Climate discussion at Bucknell.
While his Outsports article influenced many of his peers, Klug has also conducted research on the role of nonviolence in the LGBTQ movement, and while studying abroad last semester he did research on the state of LGBTQ rights in Nicaragua and Costa Rica. This past summer, Jesse worked with the International Rescue Committee, planning and facilitating workshops for incoming refugees going through the resettlement process in Seattle. He worked with both a cultural orientation class and job readiness training, a curriculum that he helped develop and implement.
On the field, Klug was one of the top players in the Patriot League and one of the premier strikers in the East throughout his career. He was a two-time All-Patriot League and two-time All-Mid-Atlantic Region selection. In 2014 he was the Patriot League's No. 2 scorer with 27 points on 11 goals and five assists. He was off to a great start in 2015, with 10 points on four goals and two assists in the first seven games, before suffering a broken bone in his foot early in the Boston University game on Sept. 27. After a six-game absence, he returned to the lineup and was a key factor in Bucknell's late push to qualify for the postseason.
Despite the injury absence, Klug still finished among the league leaders with 17 points on five goals and seven assists. He will graduate with 77 career points on 29 goals and 19 assists. The 77 points are tied for sixth-most in program history and tied for fifth in Patriot League history. He also ranks seventh all-time at Bucknell in assists and eighth in goals.
While Ohio State's Mason was named the Senior CLASS Award winner, Klug, Dayton's Amass Amankona, Brown's Jack Gorab and Davidson's Matt Pacifici were picked as First Team All-Americans.
Earning Second Team honors were North Carolina's Jonathan Campbell, Rhode Island's Mike Casey, West Virginia's Jamie Merriam, Cal Poly's Chase Minter and Stanford's Brandon Vincent.
Klug is the second Bucknell student-athlete to earn Senior CLASS All-America honors. Mike Muscala received the same honor in men's basketball in 2013.
