As a lifelong resident of Wisconsin, Michael J. Hopkins graduated from Beloit College with a degree in economics while later earning a degree in history from Arizona State University and the University of Wisconsin–Platteville. He earned his master’s degree in the humanities from California State University (Dominguez Hills). After a forty-year career teaching high school social studies at Darlington High School (for all but one year), as well as coaching basketball, baseball, and football at Darlington High School for many years, he is retired. In 2021, he was inducted into the Wisconsin Basketball Coaches Association Hall of Fame. Recently, he has embarked on a second career as an author. In 2025, he published his autobiographical memoir as an athlete and coach, titled Embracing A Competitive Life: Trials, Triumphs, and 150 Life Lessons in Six Decades of Competition. On September 22, 2026, his second book, The Irish Ties That Bind, will be published by Historium Press.
As a lifelong resident of Wisconsin, Michael J. Hopkins graduated from Beloit College with a degree in economics while later earning a degree in history from Arizona State University and the University of Wisconsin–Platteville. He earned his master’s degree in the humanities from California State University (Dominguez Hills). After a forty-year career teaching high school social studies at Darlington High School (for all but one year), as well...
From the green hills of southern Ireland to the heartland of America, four families are united by faith, perseverance, and an enduring legacy that spans generations. As famine and hardship drive Irish immigrants across the Atlantic in the mid-nineteenth century, the Power and Coughlin families plant new roots in the American Midwest. Their...
Trials, Triumphs, and 150 Life Lessons in Six Decades of Competition
Embracing a Competitive Life offers an autobiographical sketch of the role that competition played, both informally and formally, in the life of Michael J. Hopkins for six decades. Nearly the first twenty-five years of this competitive life were as a student-athlete and coach in his hometown of Beloit, Wisconsin. After accepting a full-time...
