(Cover photo courtesy Bucknell Athletics)

LEWISBURG, PA – (school release) Bucknell’s Jesse Klug on Monday was named one of the 10 national finalists for the 2015 Senior CLASS Award for the sport of men’s soccer. To be eligible for the award, a student-athlete must be classified as an NCAA Division I senior and have notable achievements in four areas of excellence: community, classroom, character and competition.

Earlier on goalWA.net:

Back in September, Klug was picked as one of 30 candidates for the Senior CLASS Award. At this stage, nationwide fan voting begins immediately to help select the winner. Fans are encouraged to vote on the Senior CLASS Award website through Nov. 23. Fan votes will be combined with media and Division I head coaches’ votes to determine the winner. The Senior CLASS Award winners will be announced during the 2015 NCAA Men’s and Women’s College Cup championships in December.

An acronym for Celebrating Loyalty and Achievement for Staying in School®, the Senior CLASS Award focuses on the total student-athlete and encourages students to use their platform in athletics to make a positive impact as leaders in their communities.

Joining Klug on the list of finalists are Amass Amankona of Dayton, Jonathan Campbell of North Carolina, Mike Casey of Rhode Island, Jack Gorab of Brown, Zach Mason of Ohio State, Jamie Merriam of West Virginia, Chase Minter of Cal Poly, Matt Pacifici of Davidson and Brandon Vincent of Stanford.

Klug excels in all four criteria for the Senior CLASS Award. In the classroom, he began his senior year with a 3.65 cumulative GPA. Klug was a Capital One Third-Team Academic All-American and an NSCAA Scholar All-American in 2014. He has won the Charles F. White Prize for Scholar-Athletes and 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 has been one of the top players in the Patriot League and one of the premier strikers in the East. He is a two-time All-Patriot League and two-time All-Mid-Atlantic Region selection. Last year 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. Klug suffered a broken bone in his foot early in the Boston University game on Sept. 27, but after a six-game absence, he returned to the lineup this past Saturday at American.

Klug had never missed a game in his career until that injury, and he now ranks eighth in Bucknell history in goals (28) and points (70).