It takes a certain level of intelligence to coach in hockey, but the Cardiff Devils' Luke Piggott might be the smartest player and coach in the Champions Hockey League. What he's doing when he's not on the ice or behind the bench may surprise you!
32-year-old Piggott balances his hockey career with a full-time career at the Wales Cancer Research Centre who work closely with the European Cancer Stem Cell Research Institute at Cardiff University, researching ways to target stem cells in breast cancer patients, and his official title is Dr Luke Piggott.
“I did my A-Levels in Biology, Chemistry, Maths and strangely Spanish," Piggott explained. "But I really enjoyed the Biology and Chemistry and I was very much a science orientated student, so my solution to that was to do a biochemistry degree.”
After graduating with a degree in medical biochemistry, Piggott has gone on to obtain a Masters’ degree before completing his PhD in 2012 and found a massive breakthrough in fighting breast cancer, after discovering a way to kill breast cancer stem cells.
"The only stipulation from the Devils and my University is that I get my work done on time and to a high enough quality"Dr. Luke Piggott (Forward, Cardiff Devils & Cardiff University Stem Cell Researcher)
Balancing the responsibilities of two jobs is hard enough for most people, especially when one is as a professional hockey player and another is battling cancer, but over the years Piggott says he’s become very good at finding the right balance between the two.
“Over the years I’ve become quite efficient with my time and I’m very lucky in the sense that both Andrew Lord (Devils' Head Coach) and my boss at the University are very supportive of me pursuing both careers” Piggott said.
“The balance is quite nice and to be honest with you, the only real stipulation they ever put on me is so long as I’m doing my work and getting it done on time and to a high enough quality, they don’t really mind when I do it.”
Back at the rink though, he has proven himself to be a tremendous right-hand man to Devils head coach Andrew Lord. Last year while Lord was still a player-coach, Piggott ran the bench in a few of the Devils CHL games; and now Lord has hung up the skates and stepped onto the bench full time, the duo pushed SC Bern and Red Bull Salzburg in their four games so far this year. But it's not the only big challenge Piggott is facing in his work.
“At the end of my undergraduate degree, you get a taste of different areas of biochemistry, so there was biology, there was some toxicology and there was a couple of modules that I did that were cancer related," said the forward who was born in Calgary, Alberta.
“I think the thing that really attracted me to that field as whole is I enjoy a challenge, and I can see no bigger challenge really than trying to battle cancer," he continued. "There are very few areas where I feel like you can have an absolutely huge impact on someone’s life, or the general well being of lots of people, and I think that really appealed to me. Obviously with it being so common and it affecting pretty much every person in the world, I just wanted to see if there was anything that I could do that would have that much of an impact on as many people.”