Rock solid describes how a field hockey defender should act. They face repeated danger from aerial projectiles and don a stiff upper lip against a determined and punishing foe. They are the last line of defense for the goalkeeper encumbered in bulky and restrictive armor. A great defender keeps the goalie from having to overextend themselves. The Bucknell field hockey team is fortunate to have such a defender in Kira Leclercq, who incorporates those traits in her academic and athletic career.
She performs her duties with a granite consistency but exhumes a spirit with the speed of a rushing avalanche. Leclercq passionately celebrates goals with her team with the giddiness of a stone skipping across a calm creek. A team captain that her fellow seniors can depend on and the underclassmen can hope to emulate, Leclercq on the pitch is as limestone solid as her major in Environmental Geosciences.
Leclercq started in field hockey by attending her older sister's games at the tender age of one. Like many younger siblings, they followed the trail blazed by older participants. She quickly fell in love with the game, but like all loves, she occasionally threatened to quit. Her mother used careful diplomacy, telling Leclercq that she could quit if she felt the same way three months later. Inevitably, these hasty feelings would dissipate by then, and the matter of quitting was dropped.
"I grew up right outside Berlin and the closest thing to my house was a field hockey field. My sister started when she was four. I got pushed into it. I loved it. It was a social thing that happened and obviously I wanted to do what my sister did."
Her athletic ability and interest were not surprising. The Leclercq family embraces athleticism, and Kira, if she decided, could have followed her mother's tradition and played tennis. She played tennis competitively until she was 12. An injury forced her to decide between field hockey and tennis and Leclercq chose the former. Even now, when she returns home, the whole clan heads to the tennis court and wages civil war.
Her journey to Bucknell was not typical. Leclercq decided to take a gap year after graduating from high school. She traveled and played field hockey with her team. It was right after COVID and she was unsure about what university would look like and what the experience would be. One of her friends was recruited by Princeton and encouraged her to journey overseas. Bucknell offered her the best financial package and she never looked back or reconsidered. Her major was another easy decision.
"I have known my major since I was a little kid. I have always wanted to do something in the sciences. It used to be astrophysics, but when I delved into it, I realized it was too theoretical. I wanted something more hands-on and in front of me. I love what I do."
Leclercq is a seasoned world traveler. Not satisfied with traveling halfway across the globe to America, she spent her 2025 spring semester journeying to New Zealand. She spent three weeks in a field camp, sleeping in huts and working eight to nine hours a day. Then, she spent her spring break on a three-week canoeing experience. If that wasn't enough, Leclercq squeezed in field hockey with a Premier League team.
"I always wanted to go. As a Geoscientist, you always hear so much about their volcanic activity. Classes were more laid back than in America. I went to the North Island and explored the mountain used for Mount Doom in The Hobbit. It was magical."
Her crowning achievement in the Geosciences is a research project titled "A 7,600-year record of temperature and vegetation change from the Lofoten Archipelago, Arctic Norway." Leclercq sampled and studied every other centimeter for items called alkali modes in carbon chains, allowing scientists to trace back surface temperatures. After all, algae grows on the surface of the lake and then drops, like a stone, to the bottom.
"I wanted to do something that wasn't hard rock. I don't love the sedimentary or hard rock sciences. Professor Curtin placed me on this project. At first, I wasn't certain how great a project it was, but now I am very grateful to her. I am finished with all my lab work on Sunday and ran almost 200 samples."
Leclercq will receive the opportunity to present at AGU (American Geophysical Union) again. She presented a poster last December at AGU 24 and enjoyed the experience. The paper and the thesis will be daunting for the student-athlete, especially with field hockey in season, but Leclercq is ready to tackle the situation after experiencing the 2024 conference.
The AGU conference is the largest in the world for the Earth Sciences wth over 2,000-3,000 presenters. Tons of researchers stroll around the floor wearing nametags bearing the names of NASA and Google. It is a who's who in the discipline. Professor Curtin introduced Leclercq to multiple mountains in the field.
"Sometimes, people don't recognize how important geoscientists are. Because everything GPS or plantery science requires a background in geoscience. Attending the event makes you realize it. It is a small community and everyone knows each other. It was a long day of standing and talking. It was nerve-racking for the first hour, and then it was very entertaining."
As successful as Leclercq has been in the Geoscience field, her triumphs in the field hockey terra firma loom ever larger. Leclercq has collected a gold mine worth of awards: 2024 Patriot League Defensive Player of the Year, three-time All-Patriot League, two-time All-NFHCA Region, First Team All-ECAC, and led the nation in defensive saves (9) last year. She was recently named Preseason Patriot League Defensive Player of the Year and selected to the NFHCA Watchlist.
Leclercq earned the captain's stripes for the 2025 season. She understands the obligation of duty and the weight it carries, but she will lead, not by bellowing and an iron rod, but by example and understanding.
"I think that with KK, our culture changed, and I think it's finally somewhere near what we wanted it to be four years ago, and I like to think that I'm a big part of that. And obviously, it's just the title, and at the end of the day, it doesn't really matter. But I don't know. I think as a senior in general, as one of the older people on the team, you just realize that people do look up to you because they are four years younger, and some of them do want to be in the position that you are in right now. And obviously, everyone's way there is different. I'm not going to tell anybody that you need to do this, this, and this to get there. Everyone has their own path. I love being a cheerleader for my teammates because I get to see them grow. Because I think we have a really good team. And it's really fun at the moment."
An example of her leadership resides in her 21 career defensive saves - a number that ranks second in Bucknell history. Leclercq has the art of the defensive save down to a science. She mastered the ability to prevent surefire goals arriving from a solid, rock-like sphere. The system involves a steadfast willingness to risk one's body along with masterful eye discipline. It is like defending the triple option in football. Sound and principled technique wins the game, not fancy freelancing.
"It's looking at the ball. You can't swing at the ball because when you swing, you're going to miss. You just have to plant your feet on the ground. You have to let the ball come to you. And you have to be ready for someone to touch it. Sometimes, it doesn't touch your stick, but the ref doesn't see it. And you just have to play it off. And sometimes someone in front of you touches it, and it doesn't touch their stick. You just have to play through anything. And I think that's the mindset. It's like every time there's a corner, I expect the ball will come to me. There's never a corner where I don't want the ball. That's the mindset I think you need to have because if you're not ready for it there's no way you're gonna save it."
Assistant coach Ali McEvoy combined forces with her to establish Leclercq's dominance. McEvoy played at Maryland and became a legend, winning two NCAA Championships and collecting a treasure chest of awards, including NFHCA First Team All-American, 2013 womensfieldhockey.com First Team All-American, and the 2013 ACC Defensive Player of the Year. Leclercq could not dig up a better mentor. The results on the field reinforce their partnership's strength.
"Kira is a force to be reckoned with on the field and in the classroom. Her work ethic and ability to hold herself and her teammates to Bucknell’s standards make her a standout leader. I feel lucky to experience her passion, collaboration and competitive spirit each day for the last four years. The mutual respect that has grown between Kira and I over the past four years has given our relationship the ability to get things done quickly, and in the best way for the established goals of the team. She is uniquely her, and I forever cherish and respect that- and feel the luckiest to have been a small part of her career at Bucknell."
Leclercq has the same mutual respect for McEvoy as the duo enters their fourth season together.
"She's great. We have grown through growing pains together over these past few years. I really appreciate how she has learned how I receive communication in practice or in games especially in games. So, I see her side and she sees my side, which is why I think it works well. And she's really good at when I do have bad games or do have bad quarters to like pull me back into what I need to do. So I usually ask give me two things to focus on this quarter. She really thinks about it. She's not just throwing out words. She really thinks about what will help me to best, if I focus on these two things. And then usually everything else just comes. So I really, really appreciate that."
When Leclercq isn't stopping penalty corner shots, she is launching them into hapless defenders. Her scythe-like swing delivers cannonballs into the flying wedge of defenders that few players even brave an attempt at stopping. Her six goals in 2024 were second to All-American Lily Neilson's 18 tallies and her 14 career scores are first among Bucknell returnees.
"That's a lot more difficult than making a save. There's a lot of technique to the drag flick, and a lot of people are going to be like, oh, yeah, it's the footwork and the speed and whatever it is. I think that it's a combination of knowing where the goalie's gonna go because sometimes they overstep their line and you can sneak it in the other corner but it's a combination of knowing what the goalie's gonna do and about understanding that if you have a post player you know that has 12 saves you're not gonna go that corner like I know these people, but then at the other time, if that post player is one of the pairs that ran me over earlier that game, I'm going to put it right in their face. It's a mindset like that. If I know, I see the post player is the girl that plays forward, and I have to mark her all the time, and she's rammed her elbow in my chest, and I see that she's the post player, I'm putting it right at her shins. But when I'm like, OK, this is technical, I'm looking, OK, the goalie is really good with her hands. she's really aggressive she comes out a lot then I'm like okay she oversteps her line to the right a little bit then I'm gonna go left or like it's things like that and then when it's like oh you need to score it's just about me like then it's about what where am I good where do I always score and where do I need to go and then I go there if someone that has pissed me off that game they're getting it right at their head because It's one of the most satisfying things ever. It's like, okay, like you jumped out of the way the ball came at you."
Leclercq has been too busy to worry about spending her in retrospective. She did express pride in how she has been flexible in her yearly approaches. Like all great athletes and people, she does not rest on her laurels and think first and foremost about others.
"There are things that I really, really wanted for myself that obvious. I really wanted to be defensive player of the year last year. It's always so much sweeter in your head than it is at the end. I'm not going to change my play to get anything ever. If anyone else gets it, I don't care. I just want to win with the team. But there are obviously individual things that you're like, I don't want Lafayette to get that. I know that my teammates think the same way. We don't want anyone else to have this. This is something for our team. And that's how I see it too. I didn't win this for myself. I won this for our team because I didn't want anybody else to have it. I think I'm the proudest of the proudest of this year and how we've started this year and how we're going to keep going this year. And I'm really excited, and I think that it's going to be really fun. I'm really proud of my class, my grade. They're really great people, and they've developed a lot."
Like all seniors, Leclercq has one eye on the present and one eye on the future. She wants to bring a Patriot League Championship back to the Banks of the Susquehanna. Her postgraduate plans involve a future in applied geosciences at graduate school while trying to stay involved in field hockey. She has coached before and enjoyed the experience. Her cerebral approach to the sports naturally lends itself to a coaching career.
Leclercq designed to provide a statement on what Bucknell has meant to her. Her words reverberate what most Bucknell students believe about the school.
"I never expected Bucknell to turn into the home that it has turned into. I just feel at home and at peace and I feel safe. I see the brick walls, and I know exactly where I am. I know exactly where I need to go. And it's just a great feeling. I walk into people that I know that have known me since I was a freshman and they followed my journey and it's so nice to see everyone. The people always make the place. It's a community and it really really feels like that and especially right now. I feel like everyone's rooting for me and it's a really nice feeling and it just makes me want to give back. It makes me want to win games, and it makes me want to say thank you a million times, and it makes me want to appreciate all the work that everybody does. Everyone contributes to our success, and it's so fun to see how people come together and how sports can bring people together. It's so fun, and I'm so happy to get to see other people thrive, too, and step into their senior year and kind of get their victory lap. Bucknell's been a really, really great home for the past three years, and it will be an amazing place for the next year. I'll always keep it close to my heart."
Leclercq's rock-solid demeanor and habits will continue to guide the defender to success on the pitch and in the research lab. Bucknell fans should cherish the year they have left with Leclercq. Her legacy will live as long as the Appalachian Mountains.
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