Purdue’s Kim, Replogle Awarded Big Ten Medal Of Honor
Purdue seniors selected for conference’s most prestigious award for athletics and scholastic excellence
ROSEMONT, Ill. — The Purdue University Athletic Department announced August Kim of the women’s golf team and Jake Replogle of the football team were awarded the prestigious Big Ten Conference Medal of Honor at the fifth-annual Golden Pete Awards Show at historic Loeb Playhouse on Purdue’s campus in West Lafayette, Ind.
Kim was the 2016 Big Ten champion, setting the 54-hole conference championship record with a nine-under-par 207 and becoming the sixth Boilermaker in program history to take home a conference title. She is a three-time All-Big Ten honoree, including first team honors in 2016, and earned Women’s Golf Coaches Association all-region recognition last season, as well. Kim posted a second straight top-10 finish at the 2017 Big Ten Championships, tying for eighth place and notching the 13th top-10 tournament performance of her career.
As a senior, she led the Boilermakers to a pair of tournament team titles and has played 65 percent of her rounds at par or better. Her 72.24 stroke average this year is the best by a Boilermaker since Maria Hernandez in 2007-08, and currently ranks second in school history. The St. Augustine, Florida, native will be a three-time WGCA All-Scholar team and Academic All-Big Ten honoree. Kim is an Academic All-America nominee in 2017, maintaining a 3.56 grade-point average as a biochemistry major, and she will graduate in May.
Replogle, a defensive tackle from Centerville, Ohio, was a four-year letterwinner for the Boilermakers. Appearing in 39 career games, he amassed 158 total tackles, including 35 for loss and 7.5 sacks. His tackles for loss total ranks tied for 14th in school history. Prior to the 2016 season, Replogle was named to the watch lists for the Chuck Bednarik Award, Outland Trophy and Lombardi Award. Then, despite missing nearly half of the Big Ten Conference schedule with an injury, he was voted honorable mention All-Big Ten by the conference coaches, finished second on the team with 9.5 tackles for loss and eighth with 45 total tackles.
The co-captain was Purdue’s National Football Foundation 2016 National Scholar Athlete nominee, a member of the NFF’s 2017 Hampshire Honor Society (which highlights the sport of football’s unique ability to develop tomorrow’s brightest leaders) and a three-time Academic All-Big Ten recipient. Boasting a 3.49 cumulative grade-point average, Replogle will graduate in May with dual degrees in accounting and management.
The Big Ten, the nation’s oldest collegiate conference, commemorates the 103rd anniversary of a very unique tradition – the Big Ten Medal of Honor. The conference’s most exclusive award was the first of its kind in intercollegiate athletics to recognize academic and athletic excellence. The Big Ten Medal of Honor was first awarded in 1915 to one student from the graduating class of each university who had “attained the greatest proficiency in athletics and scholastic work.” Big Ten schools currently feature more than 9,500 students competing in intercollegiate athletics, but only 28 earn this prestigious award on an annual basis. In more than 100 years of the Big Ten Medal of Honor, almost 1,400 students have earned this distinction.
