“Number one, I prayed about it,” Hopkins explained. “And the more I heard everybody… everyone I reached out to in the area told me not to come. But I kept hearing, ‘come.’”
Conversations with the Manor administration, including principal Kandice Smith and superintendent Robert Sormani influenced his decision, as did a familiar face in new district athletic director Carlesa Dixon.
“Knowing Carlesa Dixon, we both came from Humble, (so) there was some familiarity there,” he agreed.
Then there was his upbringing. The 39-year-old is a native of, “the Crockett, TX, home of the Crockett Bulldogs in East Texas,” (he emphasized the “the,” as opposed to Austin Crockett. Can a new rivalry be far behind?) As such, he was familiar with Manor from his youth.
“Being from Crockett and playing Manor, through my high school days and watching the older guys play Manor, there’s always talent here.”
But what may have attracted him to the job the most was what might have scared off others.
“I gravitate to where, I guess you’re gonna get more muddy here. Where it ain’t ready-made or ready-fixed; you’ve gotta go out there and actually develop that. That’s the things that gravitates me to most of my career in coaching,” he continued. “Going to those places where you have to give kids rides, you have to feed them, you have to step in the gap and be mentors, fathers, brothers, homeboys, councilors, guidance or whatever. Those are important traits of my coaching side, because these kids deserve to be winners and they haven’t won in a while. And that’s the things that we’re trying to give them.”
It’s a tall task for anyone, let alone someone at the relatively young age of 39-years-old.
“Some say it’s pretty young. But when I was being raised by my grandfather, who coached for 64 years, and being a coach’s kid and being around football – I was a ball boy since I was like 3 or 4 years-old. So, yes. Am I pretty young? Absolutely. But I’m very seasoned. I was raised with seasoned people.”
“Seasoned” is a pretty good word to describe Hopkins, who’s already jammed a ton of coaching into those 39 years. Hopkins played college ball at Tyler Junior College and closed out his playing days at Sam Houston State.
““Nah, absolutely not,” he chuckled when asked about playing after college. “I wasn’t good enough to do all that. I went straight to coaching. It was good because I had actually played junior college ball at Tyler Junior College. So right as soon as I got done playing at Sam Houston, I went straight to coaching at Tyler Junior College for Danny Palmer. I coached running backs for him, and I’ve just been in it ever since.
“I spent nine years at the college level between Tyler Junior College, Kilgore College and Louisiana Tech and a little bit with Sam Houston. So, I had a great run at the college level,” he continued. “I had a great time. Learned how to recruit people, develop people and that’s the biggest thing.”
Hopkins then made the transition to coaching in high school, with stops at La Marque and Klein Oak before Humble where he developed a new outlook on his craft.
“In high school it’s a little different. You’ve gotta recruit your hallways. You’ve gotta recruit your (school’s) borders. You’ve got to make sure people are wanting to be Manor Mustangs, right? But the biggest thing is, the difference between high school and college is that (in college) I go recruit the talent that I’m looking for. Here, I’ve got to be able to create the talent. I’ve got to convert the talent; have to mold it, right?
“It’s like a new vehicle. In college, all I had to do was put some rims on it to make the vehicle look nice. Here, I had to get the whole vehicle. And that’s the exciting part about it. We haven’t won many games the last 4 or 5 years, so that’s the exciting part about being here and getting this thing rolling the right way that it should be rolling.”
It quickly becomes apparent when talking with Hopkins that he’s not just talking about “rolling the right way” on the football field. Though unmarried, he makes it clear that family and community are every bit as important to him as X’s and O’s.
“I have a family. I have a village that supports me and loves me and shows up for me every step of the way,” he stated.
“We have Family Fridays where we talk about everything but football. We’ll get to know our community in such a good way where we’ve been to every food bank, we’ve been to nursing homes, we’ve been to every elementary school, we’ve fed every teacher in the district, we’ve just done so much stuff in our community. Those things were important to me because I want our community to know that we’re on the front lines. But I also want the kids to know it’s more than just football. Football… to me, doing those things is the byproduct of playing football.”
Hopkins gives a lot of credit for that off-the-field perspective to his first hire.
“I brought the first DFO (Director of Football Operations) here to Manor, Ebony Gordley,” he declared. “She’s a mother, so we have a mother figure in the football facilities with us to give us that motherly heart. To understand what kids expect from a mother’s part. Because certain things she can reach them that we can’t. It also gives that feeling as a wife, too, though. As far as being proactive; as far as scheduling; as far as doing all those things.
“So, my thing is that I’m not going to be the reason why you’re not at home with your wife or with your kids, right? You’re not gonna be able to use me as an excuse or the reason why you have friction with your family. The number one thing that will get you let go here or get you fired is missing your daughter’s recital or missing a little league football game or baseball, or missing a birthday, whether it’s your wife’s or, your in-laws’ matter too. I’m a big family person, so those things are huge to me.”
Hopkins understands that reestablishing off-the-field values goes hand-in-hand with restoring Manor football’s success on the field. After all, it wasn’t that long ago that the Mustangs were regular playoff contenders.
“(Our) expectations are having championship behaviors. We don’t have that right now. Learning that everything we do, we’ve gotta have championship behaviors. We’ve gotta have a plan of action; a plan to win. And before you win, you’ve got to eliminate the reasons why you lose. And my thing is, it is showing that we can compete with anybody. I want us to show the fight that we have, the grit that we have.”
Hopkins summed it up in one phrase: LET’S RIDE.
“The ‘L’ stands for ‘Love,’” he explained. “Everything that we do in this program’s gonna be about love. The ‘E’ stands for ‘Energy.’ We’re gonna bring the right energy every day. ‘T’ stands for ‘Toughness.’ We’re gonna be mentally tough; physically tough; emotionally tough. ‘S’ -- we’re gonna be ‘Smart’ here in the building and we’re gonna be smart football players.
“‘R’ because football is about ‘Resilience.’ You’re gonna get punched in the face, so we’re gonna show a lot of resilience. And when we coach, we’re gonna be very Intentional; that’s what the ‘I’ means. And the ‘D’ stands for ‘Detail,’ but also we’re gonna ‘Elevate’ everywhere we go. And we’re gonna earn the right to win.”
Only time will tell if that voice that told Coach Peter Hopkins to come to Manor, to get in the mud, as he put it, was right and if we is able to return the Mustangs to playoff contention.
“I’m instilling to my kids right now -- we haven’t won in a long time -- I’m expecting to make the playoffs,” he insisted. “As crazy as this is; I’ve got 35 kids in a 6A/5A program right now. And I’m expecting to make the playoffs. But we’ve got to learn how to compete first.
“We’re excited for this fall. Hopefully some exciting things going on around here.”
