Jesse Klug Receives Patriot League Award of Outstanding Leadership and Character
6/16/2016 4:29:00 PM | Men's Soccer
LEWISBURG, Pa. -- Recent Bucknell graduate Jesse Klug, a standout on the Bison men's soccer team for the last four years, garnered one of the Patriot League's highest honors on Thursday when he was selected as the recipient of the 2016 Patriot League Award of Outstanding Leadership and Character.
The Patriot League established the Award of Outstanding Leadership and Character to recognize and honor those who demonstrate excellence in leadership and service while participating in Patriot League athletics, with one male and one female winner selected each year. Provided the minimum conduct standards are met, any Patriot League student-athlete and/or team is eligible for the award, which was first awarded at the conclusion of the 2011-12 academic year.
This year's recipients are Klug and American University field hockey student-athlete Emilie Ikeda. It is the second year in a row that Bucknell has been represented, as Ryan Frazier (men's basketball) and Andrea Seifert (women's rowing) earned the honor in 2015.
Klug was the very definition of “difference-maker” on the Bucknell campus. Even though he is one of the all-time leading scorers in Patriot League soccer history, his impact on the pitch only scratched the surface of what he meant to Bucknell University and to the LGBTQ community across the country over the last four years.
A managing for sustainability major who graduated last month with a stellar 3.74 cumulative grade-point average, Klug has piled up the scholar-athlete honors throughout his career at Bucknell. In the 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. Klug was one of 10 national finalists for the Senior CLASS Award, and he was later named a Senior CLASS First Team All-American.
At the Bucknell Senior Athletics Awards Dinner held earlier this spring, Klug received both the 'Ray Bucknell Diversity Award and the Edward W. Pangburn Award. At the President's Awards Ceremony held on Commencement Weekend, Klug received the University Prize for Men. He also won the Charles F. White Prize for Scholar-Athletes and the ECAC Merit Award, and he was in Mortar Board and Omicron Delta Kappa (service chair) honor societies.
Klug's academic focus was on economic and socio-cultural issues, and he also earned 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 was one of the foremost LGBTQ activists on the Bucknell campus. He was 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. This spring he was invited to Indianapolis to appear as a panelist at the NCAA Inclusion Forum. He spoke at a session titled, “Supporting Students and Staff: Developing LGBTQ Inclusive Policy and Best Practices”. One of his co-panelists was Pat Griffin, who is one of the pioneers and leaders in addressing LGBT issues in sports.
While his Outsports article influenced many of his peers, Klug also conducted research on the role of nonviolence in the LGBTQ movement, and while studying abroad he did research on the state of LGBTQ rights in Nicaragua and Costa Rica. Last summer, Klug 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 graduated 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.
