April 29, 2008

LEWISBURG, Pa. - Bucknell senior Krista Lee Gentile (North Haledon, N.J./Immaculate Heart Academy), a co-captain of the women's soccer team and four-time All-Patriot League honoree, received a special award at the University's annual Senior Athletic Awards Banquet, sponsored by the Bison Club and held in Sojka Pavilion on April 29.

Gentile won the Lee S. "Bud" Ranck Memorial Award, presented to senior athletes "for outstanding spirit and contributions to the Bucknell athletic program." Gentile shared the award with Jason Rechel of the men's water polo team.

In addition to Gentile and Rechel, several other student-athletes were honored at the banquet, including the winners of the Christy Mathewson Award, given to the most outstanding athletes in the senior class. Rowing All-American Katherine Brewster-Duffy, won the women's Mathewson Award, while four-time All-Patriot League honoree Jason Buursma of the baseball team won the men's Mathewson Award.

During her four-year career, Gentile helped the Bison capture a Patriot League tournament championship in 2005 and back-to-back regular season titles in 2006 and 2007. Part of the winningest class in Bucknell women's soccer history, Gentile led the squad in scoring as a freshman and again as a junior despite missing the first five games of the season due to injury.

In 28 career regular season games against Patriot League opponents, Gentile finished with 17 goals and eight assists for 42 points and is just the second player in program history to garner four All-Patriot League honors, being named to the second team three times and earning a first team nod in 2006. She ranks third in the program record book for career points (83) and career goals (34) and is fourth in career assists (15) and second in game winning goals (14). Her 2005 totals rank in the top-10 for a single season as she is eighth in points (28) and tied for 10th in goals (11).

As a junior, Gentile finished first in the Patriot League in points per game in 2006 (1.85), goals per game (0.77) and game winning goals (5) and was named to the 2006 Patriot League All-Tournament Team. As a sophomore in 2005, her hat trick against Navy helped vault the Bison into the Patriot League tournament, where she netted the game winning goal in the league championship match to send the squad to the NCAA Tournament for the second time in program history.

Bucknell is a highly-selective, privately endowed liberal arts institution with an enrollment of approximately 3,400 undergraduate students. Bucknell competes in NCAA Division I as a member of the Patriot League and has full membership along with American, Army, Colgate, Holy Cross, Lafayette, Lehigh and Navy. Bucknell has won the Presidents' Cup, signifying the Patriot League's all-sports champion, in 13 of 17 years,

Recently, 17 Bison programs - the seventh-most in Division I - earned NCAA Public Recognition for having Academic Performance Rates in the top 10 percent nationally in their respective sport. In addition, Bucknell ranks fifth in Division I in the total number of CoSIDA Academic All-America selections, with 114 national Academic All-Americans since 1970.