Being back in Michigan

Finding a sense of satisfaction at Champion and the Dickinson Amateur Hockey Association

Meet Mark Fitzpatrick

I was born and raised in Alpena. You're probably not familiar with Alpena, but if you did make it that way and traveled through Alpena, you would find hints of Iron Mountain, Marquette, and Escanaba. It's a town right on Lake Huron in Lower Michigan. The landscape is very similar, and we have great color seasons. The temperature is pretty close; probably, the only difference is snowfall. There's more snowfall here than there, and the winter is a little bit shorter, but overall very similar.

Coming out of college, I found a job posting by Champion for a project in Texas. I was younger and eager to move around the country, so I took the job opportunity. Two and a half years later, my job with Champion brought me to Iron Mountain, Michigan.

It was a big selling point was to be back in Michigan. Even though I live in Wisconsin, just over the border, to be back close to family and great friends in Michigan was huge. I like that it feels like home. Being from an area that's very similar to this one puts me at ease.

I met my wife, and I'll be honest: We've been busy ever since. We have two small boys, twins who are 12. They were probably 3 or 4 before we caught what we thought was a break. The next thing you know, we're doing sports and whatever else the area has to offer.

Working at Champion

I’m the President of the National Ready Mix Division at Champion. We are more like a construction company than a material producer. We have four employees in the office and around 100 who are out in the field working around the country. Early on in projects, our core group in the office travels to the sites to do the initial set-up. Depending on the project, we might be in the field 4-6 months out of the year. We travel from project to project. Since I’ve been with the company for the last 17 years or so, we've had projects in Pennsylvania, Arizona, Texas, Idaho, West Virginia, Ohio, and South Carolina.

We're constantly building something, and the projects we get to work on are very large, year on year, anywhere from $10-$30 billion-sized construction projects. We get to see some very interesting things in different parts of the country.

The sense of satisfaction is one of the best things we get out of it.

It's a tagline for most people, but at Champion, it's the people. I’m very fortunate to work for the Verrettes, and not because he's 50 feet down the hall from me. It reminds me of my parents. My parents are small business owners. They used to own a grocery store and still own three hardware stores. We grew up in that environment, my brother, my sister and I, and it's a lot of the same feeling working for the Verrettes. You can walk in the door with any kind of question. You're never turned away. It's always just felt very comfortable.

Locals to the region might be familiar with Champion Concrete, which is a completely separate division of the company. Champion Concrete works locally, while our projects are nationwide.

Living in the Dickinson area

I really didn't know anyone the first year that I was here. I had some coworkers, and we did stuff together. It was almost like a vacation. I got to do a lot of fly fishing, which made my day. I do like ice fishing; I can't say I'm an avid hunter, but I definitely like to fish.

My wife and I both like the winter, too. We like being outdoors, especially boating, and the area provides many of those opportunities.

Most towns have a handful of things you can do in a season, but here, there are just so many different things available if you really want to look. It's very much like opening a book where you have to actually dig in a little bit to experience everything that there is to offer. It's not a scenario where you can just check it out online and then just show up and think you're going to find everything. It just doesn't work that way.

Most people wouldn't even know that we have bike trails, but the fact is, we have a lot of bike trails. As far as coming to the area, when you look at it from the outside, realize there's much more to offer than what you're seeing up front. You can drive through the town and take 5 or 10 minutes to drive all the way through it. If you start taking all the side roads and start looking around and seeing what there is, you could be here for weeks, months…

Don't ask me why this analogy came to my mind, but I'm sure most people have seen the movie Cars if you have kids. In the first Cars movie, they talk about the interstate bypassing all the little towns. US2 runs right through the middle of Iron Mountain. If you veer off for a second, you will find all kinds of things you had no idea even existed, and you would think the Iron Mountain-Kingsford area is a big town.

Dickinson Amateur Hockey Association

My wife and I think it is important that you try new things and learn how to do them so that as you get older, you have options, and it could be in anything. It doesn't have to be in sports. It could be chess, anything, so you understand how things work.

The ice arena had a free event to try hockey, and my wife was like, we should try it. I was like, oh, sure, okay. We would take the boys out skating when they were little. I played hockey for one year. I thought we would be there and it was just going to be a one-off. We're going to go test it out, and they're both going to be like, this isn't for me. But that didn't work that way. Both kids played for a few years, and one of them continues to play.

As I've learned, any time you express any interest in helping or doing anything, they've got you, and that's what happened at the Mountain View Ice Arena.

They got me. I ended up coaching, being on the board of directors, helping with programs and fundraising and all kinds of things. There's quite a large group of people who are involved. It's definitely the village.

As far as I’m aware, Mountain View Ice Arena is the only hockey rink in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan that is 100% funded by the organizations that use the arena. There's no city funding. There are fantastic sponsors in the community, but no other company or entity is actually funneling money to manage the rink. It is purely managed by a whole bunch of nonprofit organizations that use the rink.

The history of the Dickinson Amateur Hockey Association and Mountain View Ice Arena is a very interesting story. They started as an outdoor rink at City Park. For years, they operated as an outdoor ice rink and had teams from throughout the U.P. and Wisconsin come over and play. They started to have a problem with getting teams to come to play because nobody wanted to play outside in the winter. It's cold, and you have kids sitting on benches and snowbanks waiting to go in instead of cycling in from the boards. In the early 80s, they decided to figure out a way to get an indoor ice arena. They could not get any support from the area agencies, the city, or anyone else. Mountain View Ice Arena was completely built by the community. It was all volunteers and donations from businesses who supplied materials. Some people took mortgages out on their homes. There is even a story about the ironworkers from Marquette coming down and putting up all the iron inside the building and everything else for free.It is a very interesting story about how they pulled it together and put the rink up, and it's been there ever since, operating in the same manner.

There were some renovations last year, so, again, the community pulling together and investing time and effort to try and get it fixed. And they did it just like always. We're actually back at it again. There are some more improvements that will have to be made in the next 3 to 5 years on a much bigger scale. We're working on those now, as a group, between Mountain View Ice Arena, DAHA, the figure skating club, Dad’s League, and all the other groups. Everybody is chipping in to help.

I help with the Learn to Play program when I have time. A couple of others are always there helping out with that program. You see those very, very little kids, and they don't know how to skate at night, and then you see the joy as they get going. It's like it clicks, and they figure it out, and they couldn’t be happier that they figured it out on their own, it doesn't matter what they're doing. There's a lot of joy to be had when you see things like that.

One of my sons is still playing hockey. He's been very invested in it. The other one's focused 100% on his soccer career (at that age, you know, it's a career). Thankfully, both are invested in going to school and doing well there, too. They know that the sports will go away quickly if grades start to go backward.

906 Club

We had attempted to play for a local travel soccer team, but we ended up going to Green Bay. One of my sons played for two years in Green Bay. We were at a tournament, met Andy Trempe, and learned about the 906 Club in town.

The next thing I knew, we did not have to drive to Green Bay four times a week, and he was playing with the 906 Club. The club has grown. When we made the switch, there were 40 kids. Last fall, they doubled to 80. It's been a good experience. It's a great group of coaches, people and parents, and it is great for the area. 906 Club is trying to start its own soccer league in the U.P. for club events. Green Bay and below the bridge [downstate Michigan] are the only two that have them right now. I wouldn't be surprised if it's a full-blown league in the next two years with teams in every division.

We did so much for hockey, so it was a no-brainer to do the same for soccer. We travel so much for hockey that, honestly, traveling for soccer just seemed like an extended hockey season.

We coached for SAY soccer, too. There were 1500 kids in the soccer program last year. The Kingsford High School boy's soccer team made it to the state semifinals this year. There is definitely an opportunity and a love of the game here.

What are your favorite small businesses in the area?

I like going to 41 Lumber. They are very big sponsors of the ice arena, so happy to go there. Both my wife and I like Brick + Mortar. The people who own that place are amazing, and the people who work there are very genuine and very nice. My wife loves Carlos Cantina, and I would absolutely say Solberg is another one.

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About Champion, Inc. and Champion Concrete

Champion, Inc. & Champion Concrete Innovative construction services and mobile ready-mix concrete.

Iron Mountain, Michigan.

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About Dickinson Amateur Hockey Association

Dickinson Amateur Hockey Association

An volunteer organization run solely by the efforts of parents.

Iron Mountain, Michigan

Learn more