Inspirational speaker on Overcoming Adversity
Jan 09, 2018
Duke Pieper, teen hockey player with brain disease
Inspirational speaker on Overcoming Adversity

Duke Pieper was an elite hockey player at a young age. As a freshman at Hill-Murray High School, he made the varsity of the then-defending state champion Pioneers. Before his first game, he suffered from a brain lesion that altered his life. Given a 5 percent chance to live, Pieper overcame multiple surgeries, paralysis, and nerve damage. In place of his dreams of hockey stardom, Pieper found illness, surgery, infection, paralysis, months of hospitalization, and lingering disability. And yet, by his own admission, Pieper has emerged a better, bigger person.