Ralph Bryant remembers when he met Francine Houston.
A respected Manatee County Sheriff’s Deputy for 33 years, he’s an influential presence as Director of Programs at Manatee Police Athletic League where he’s spent 28 years. So he’s seen thousands of kids come and go through PAL’s 37-acre complex on 13th Avenue East in Bradenton.
But, as the man known as “Coach Ralph” found out, there’s only one Francine Houston.
“She came through the doors, just came up, got right there in my face, and said, ‘I’m going to call this home and be the best thing to ever come out of this building.’ She actually told me that. She was 14.”
Twenty nine years later, Francine Houston is still there.
She’s been PAL’s Director of Basketball Operations for a decade.
Oh, she’s been away from PAL for stretches of time, understand.
For instance, the 5-foot-4 dynamo point guard, a 2025 Southeast High Hall of Fame inductee, went off to play college basketball at Florida State and the University of Central Florida, then played two seasons professionally in Europe.
But PAL has always been her calling.
“It’s family,” said Houston, who’s engaged to PAL Board President Bruce Bottorff. “It’s home.”
Houston all in for PAL from the start
She began volunteering there as a teenager, doing paperwork, coaching in-house teams, helping with events, doing whatever needed to be done.
“My No. 1 volunteer,” Bryant said. “If I had to be gone for whatever reason, she knew exactly how to make sure things got done right.”
Years later, after becoming a deputy herself in 2011, Houston transferred to PAL in 2016 in an official capacity after the beloved Eddie Starling, now deceased, retired as PAL Supervisor.
“PAL has meant everything to me,” she said. “It’s given me so many opportunities to be the best version of myself. Provided me with a safe place to train, great support, no judgment. If I made a mistake it wasn’t held over my head. It was like OK, take accountability for it, learn from it, grow from it, now let’s move on. It’s OK to fail, but it gives you the strength to get back up.
“PAL has also given me the ability to help kids, not just as athletes but as individuals in society as well, groom them to be successful in their own lives whether they choose to be in sports or not.”
That’s the goal at Manatee PAL, founded in 1989 by Sheriff Charlie Wells.
A national nonprofit, PAL connects law enforcement officers and at-risk youth through sports, education and mentorship to instill positive values like respect, responsibility, and teamwork.
Self-confidence, too.
That’s a quality Houston has never needed help with as Bryant can attest.
From the time she started playing basketball as a Wakeland Elementary fourth-grader, she made her bones playing against boys.
“They were always bigger, stronger, faster, and I’m just a girl, but they couldn’t guard me. I had nice crossover and I could get to the basket. They’d get up in their feelings and didn’t take it too well, but they got over it. I was always their first pick in pickup games.”
These days, Houston’s attention has been on more than games.
Her mother recently passed, and she continues to care for her 90-year-old grandmother as well as two special needs cousins, something she’s done since adolescence.
“I’ve been dealing with a lot, taking care of my family and my other responsibilities. Too many people depend on me. I have different times of the day where I break down thinking about my mother. But my strength comes from my family that needs me and my kids in the community.
“It’s been challenging, absolutely, but PAL has a lot going on.”
PAL teams looking for a place to call home
Houston is coaching PAL’s 17-U AAU team on Puma’s NXTPRO Circuit that showcases players to college coaches.
But without a gym of their own, PAL’s teams are practice nomads.
“We’re trying to raise money to get another facility built. We’ve been partnering with the Boys and Girls Club to provide that need to the community. We’ve also been getting help from the School Board. It’s been tiring, but we’re making it work.”
Houston is also looking for sponsors for PAL’s seven AAU travel teams.
Bryant has faith in Houston’s ability to get results.
“The way she speaks and communicates, she can talk to donors, she can talk to everyday people,” he said. “The community sees her as that person who, if we need something, she’s gonna get it.
“As for her basketball knowledge? She’s taken everybody she met and created what she has and what she is and you put that with the relationships she has with everybody who comes through that door, she’s amazing, the best at what she does.”
That’s Houston.
“Roundball has given me a lot of blessings and opened up a lot of doors.”
Opening doors for others
She kept those doors open as a youngster, too.
Ask Bryant.
“She never left the gym. I’m cleaning up the gym at night, she’s shooting and says, ‘How long can I stay?’ I tell her I got about an hour, you can stay. So an hour later, I come in, she’s still shooting. ‘Can I stay 30 more minutes?’ I gotta go home!”
John Harder can relate.
Southeast’s retired Hall of Fame basketball coach, whose ’Noles won three state championships, remembers taking Houston and her teammates to summer camp for a week at Florida Southern.
“It’s 8 o’clock at night and all you can think about is a milkshake and going to bed. And Francine would be the only girl who’d stay, waiting to play the college girls when they got the court after everybody else went home.
“Then she’d raise the money to go back for another week.”
Starting as a Southeast freshman, Houston would lead the ‘Noles to a 72-21 record, scoring a career 1,609 points with 527 assists and 466 steals en route to four district titles and three consecutive regional finals.
“She was my right arm, like an assistant coach on the floor. I depended on her in so many ways, and the success was there,” Harder said. “If ever there was a player I wanted to take to the state tournament … she was the one I hurt for the most. I wanted that for her because she worked so hard for me for four years.”
Houston spent her freshman year at FSU and, when it was made apparent more playing time wasn’t in her future at Tallahassee, that was it.
But thanks to Bryant’s connections, UCF welcomed her.
“I did not want to leave the state and miss my family,” she said.
Houston redshirted her first season, learned the system, worked on her skill set and academics.
“When the team played on the road, Coach Ralph would travel to Orlando, bring me home. We’d train, then go back.”
Houston would help UCF go 19-10, winning the Atlantic Sun Conference regular season title. But UCF had less success after moving to Conference USA, going 7-21 and 8-22 her last two seasons.
Harder’s encouraging words gave her sustenance.
“’When times get hard, don’t give up, don’t quit,’” she said. “’When we’re down, just find a way. Adapt.’ That’s one of the things I carry with me now when things get difficult.”
Thanks to another Southeast Hall of Famer, Houston got her shot to play in Europe. Former ‘Noles boys coach Elliott Washington, now at IMG, got her contracts in Turkey and then Romania.
It was a cultural experience, professionally fulfilling, and Houston was able send money home. But financial difficulties plagued both clubs, and Houston called it a career.
“I wasn’t going to play for free,” she kidded.
Her playing career may have been over, but another career began.
A new beginning
Houston worked with kids at Manatee Palms Youth Services (now Suncoast Behavioral Health Center), then eventually joined MSO, working the Central Jail for five years.
Then, at Starling’s behest, she joined PAL after all those years as an uber-volunteer and threw herself into the basketball program that Bryant grew into a solid organization with nationwide travel teams.
“She was playing and coaching and mentoring as a volunteer, all the things she’s doing now,” Bryant said. “Those things already taught her how to lead and take responsibility.”
Houston brings her own cachet to it.
She espouses the message she heard at a tournament in Orlando delivered by Cynthia Cooper-Dyke, an iconic player who won championships in college, the Olympics, and WNBA.
“She said … one thing you’ve got to remember is make sure you’re respected by your teammates, coaches and opponents. It’s carrying yourself. How you respect the game. How you respect yourself. That’s what matters most.”
Houston’s been conveying that message to her AAU players for three years in a row now.
“It’s not always easy playing for a female coach unless you want it straight forward. I’m very direct with them. I absolutely love the group I’m coaching, but they’ve got their job to do and if they’re not, they sit.”
They get it.
“She holds you to a standard,” Braden River’s Espen Sloan said. “Her gender doesn’t matter.”
Cardinal Mooney’s Jamaal George agreed: “It doesn’t make any difference. The game is the game. I respect her.”
So does Mooney’s Jakyrin Smith: “She teaches you not only on the basketball court, but off of it. She’s like our mother.”
Bryant recognizes that trait.
“She’s a nurturer. She’s been taking care of her family forever. She even looks out for me.”
Funny how it’s all come together for Coach Ralph and the young woman who made that boast to him almost three decades ago.
“I tell everybody when I was coming up, Coach Ralph was everybody’s rock, everybody’s dad,” Houston said. “He was there for all of us. Picking us up, taking us home, training us for free, tutoring us for SATs, checking our homework.
“I know as an individual I wouldn’t be standing here today without him being my rock. So just as he was the rock for me, that’s the rock I strive to be for the kids in the community now.”
This article originally appeared on Sarasota Herald-Tribune: Manatee PAL director Francine Houston comes full circle on basketball court
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