Basketball Saved My Life

Standing at 5-foot-11, Little Rock forward Angelique Francis may not be the tallest player on the floor but she casts an imposing figure. With her muscles bulging out of her sleeveless jersey, there is little doubt who is the most physical player on the court. But look closely at those sleeveless arms and you will see the fading scars of a past that gives a glimpse at the adversity she is still overcoming to this day. 

Those scars tell the story of a past that has been focused on survival between abusive relationships and multiple suicide attempts. It is a story she is just now coming to terms with in order to tell others, refocusing her life from merely trying to survive to wanting to help others mired in the darkness from which she has broken free.

KNOWING ANGELIQUE

Angelique Francis knows how to play defense. Her athleticism allows her to sprint the length of the court alongside nearly everyone and her physical prowess is certainly unmatched in the Sun Belt Conference. If there is anything tougher than breaking free when she is guarding you, it might be the defenses she puts up when you try to get to know her.

You can’t blame her. Growing up, she was a rising star in the world of golf, winning approximately 31 tournaments over the course of seven years, both in her native Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex and around the world. The golf community saw an up-and-coming elite athlete on the course shooting low and flying high. It was even more remarkable because she was often the only black female on the course. Behind closed doors, it was an entirely different story.

There is tough love and then there is abuse. Unfortunately for Francis, she grew up with the latter. An authority figure in her life (whom Francis declined to identify) was able to impart their ways on her and that guiding hand was not soft. It struck often and with force. With every mistake made by the child, frustration would grow.

“The frustration would come in forms of, if they were upset with me, they would break off the leg of a chair and hit me with it,” Francis described as she would take a deep breath after every few examples, pausing to collect her composure. “They would try to stab me with a pen. When I said they were hurting me, they then turned it around and said that is what love is and I needed to understand that.”

It was then, as young as the age of six, that Francis started to learn how to compartmentalize and hide the pain. For the next six to seven years of her life, that wouldn’t be just a coping mechanism but a requirement for survival. 

ENDURING ABUSE

The punishments varied from mental abuse to physical, from being chased into a corner to being beaten or even being electrocuted. All of which were endured for making simple mistakes that any child is expected to make.

“I remember when I was around the age of 11 or 12, they would electrocute me,” Francis recalled. “I was told it would be funny if I put a knife into an electrical socket. It was a ‘project’ and I had to complete the project. When I didn’t want to do that because I knew the result, they pushed a knife into my hand and forced me to put it into a socket, electrocuting me. They saw it as funny but they didn’t understand the things they were doing were hurting me.”

The pain was there and it wasn’t going away. The most important part of it all, at least at the time, was to hide her pain and not let anyone know what was going on. Before Francis had even entered her teen years, she learned from life that she must not show the world any emotion.

“One time, I was getting whipped with a belt buckle and it hit my knee,” explained Francis. “It hurt so bad that I was limping for a couple days after that. But I was told I had to walk it off because I was being overly dramatic and because people would ask why I was limping. I had to force myself to just stop limping or, if I couldn’t control it, I had to go sit down until I could walk straight again.”

The young child searched in vain for help but as she sought someone, anyone, that could help her prevent any more pain from being inflicted, others actively worked to discredit anything she could say.

“I had to fake it, I had to show people that I was okay,” Francis explained, recalling moments of despair that still remain visible, albeit briefly, in her expression as she tells the stories of her past. “I had no choice but to put on a face that showed I was okay.”

At the time, Francis made attempts to tell others, including members of her family, what was going on. But strong manipulation thwarted those attempts and discredited her stories as wild claims made by an imaginative girl. She began to think there was no way out.

“I got to the point where I started losing myself,” Francis recalled.

AN ESCAPE THAT LED TO MORE DESPAIR

Finally, around the age of 13, Francis gathered the courage to change her situation and escape the physical violence. She moved in with her mother, Vickey Finch, who had recently become engaged. Despite moving into a physically safe environment, the shock of the change was as challenging as anything Francis had ever faced. 

When all you know is pain and fear, replacing that immediately for love and compassion doesn’t come easily and it isn’t a seamless transition for anyone involved. Her mother and the man who would eventually become her step-dad wanted nothing more than to embrace her with love and affection. In Francis’ mind, however, any form of physical touch meant anything else but affection.

The violence in her life was gone, at least from anyone else’s doing, but the mental anguish grew. A girl just now entering her teenage years only knew of punishment and pain and had rarely experienced a loving embrace. That created a mental challenge for her and she responded in the only way she knew how – to hide the pain.

“My daughter, at one point, would not even come out of her room,” recalled Vickey Finch, Francis’s mother. “She'd go into her room, shut all the doors and wouldn't talk. It took a long time to get to the point where she is right now - where she has a smile on her face and she's able to talk to anybody about what is going on.”

The smiles would still be years away for Francis as she continued to retreat into herself. Her inability to communicate what was going on further exacerbated her situation, leaving her thinking she was trapped once again. That is when she began self-harming.

“A lot of people don't understand what it feels like to transition out of a hard situation,” Francis said. “The things that were done to me had it so that I started liking pain. I would get hit and the bruising, the whips, the different colors on my skin - I starting liking that but since I wasn't receiving that pain, I needed to find something that was like it. That is when I starting self-harming.”

The quest for pain grew from self-harm to attempts of suicide. She would vary the attempts of self-harm, from cutting herself to taking pills and more. 

“I started cutting myself, putting belt buckles around my neck, I started taking pills and doing things like that. I was trying to end my life but not trying to make a big scene about it. I was fading away and trying to slowly drift away to the point where nobody would have to worry about me because I didn't care about myself.”

A single cut became multiple cuts, which grew as she searched for more pain to feel. Still just a teenager and knowing only how to hide what was happening, she began wearing long sleeves even in the midst of the heat of a Texas summer, wrapping her own bandages and covering them with clothing.

Finally, with 32 cuts on her arm, she couldn’t hide the evidence anymore. With not enough bandage material to fully cover what was going on, she had to come clean to her mom and step-dad.

“We were in the car one day and I couldn’t hide the blood anymore,” Francis recalled. “I had to ask them to take me to the store to get bandages to cover up my cuts. My mom thought I just said ‘cut’ but once I explained what was really happening, they both just broke down in the car.”

Her step-dad quickly pulled into a store parking lot as the tears cascaded out of the faces of Francis’ parents. 

“It is the most frightening thing as a mother to know that your child is hurting,” Finch solemnly said.

Francis attempted to seek help but failed to find a therapist that could communicate on her level. One therapist even tried to talk logically about why she shouldn’t try to kill herself but depression isn’t a logical disease. 

“If this is my life,” she thought, “why do I want to keep living it?”

In all, she has made eight attempts of suicide. At one point she even stepped over the railing of an atrium in her high school, four stories up and finding a sense of calm as she was about to let the pain of her life come to an end. It would be interrupted as a friend walked by and convinced her not to jump.

PAY IT FORWARD

With so many failed attempts at ending her life, Francis felt compelled to re-evaluate what all was taking place. Surely a higher power wanted her to stay alive for some reason.

“With the amount of attempts I have tried to take my life and none of them working, I had to take a step back and get a reality check because God hasn’t taken my life yet,” Francis recalled thinking. “Out of all the crazy things that I have done, I am still standing here so what is that reason?”

It soon became apparent that helping others would be her calling. At another point in high school, a friend of hers – who had repeatedly confided in Francis that she wanted to take her own life – finally reached her breaking point and made the attempt, texting Francis that the day had come. Frantically wanting to help her as the text came in, she sprinted out of her classroom to a shocked teacher and immediately ran to the school’s office, trying to explain what was happening. 

The search party found the young girl in a bathroom, locked in a stall and unwilling to come out. Fearing the worst, Francis dove underneath the stall to find her friend with multiple pills in her mouth and an open bottle of water in her hand, about to be used to help seal her fate. Reacting instinctively, Francis slapped the bottle of water out of the girl’s hand and coaxed her to spit out the pills. 

A FRESH START

As Francis entered high school, she still struggled with depression and suicidal thoughts but she knew something had to change. The first thing that she could no longer sustain was the focus she put into golf. For all that she endured growing up, the sport brought back too many painful memories. 

Enter a new sport, basketball. Francis had the athleticism to excel at the sport, of that there was never any doubt. She was years behind anyone else on her team in learning the game. However, she was on a team and that was the most important aspect. 

With a court spanning 4,700 square feet and five players on either side, basketball requires teamwork and communication. The sport of golf can be a very solitary one, leaving you with nothing but your thoughts. 

“Basketball has kept her alive because of something so simple – being a part of a team,” Finch surmises. “As a golfer, you are by yourself. But playing basketball, you have to communicate and talk. You’re going to get friends. There’s no way you can be on the court with four other people and not communicate.”

In basketball, Francis found an outlet for aggression and began to learn how to communicate with others. She first began utilizing physical fitness as an outlet for her aggression and has continued that as her journey in basketball has taken her from the high school level to Division I play on the collegiate level. 

Basketball had provided her a path to healing, but it was time limited as she progressed through high school. She had to find a way to keep playing the sport as she continued to keep healing.

Her raw athleticism drew the eye of several collegiate coaches, including those at Little Rock, but there was a need for refinement. After all, she only started playing the sport of basketball her freshman year of high school. 

“I remember she attended a camp at Little Rock and even though she sprained an ankle, she kept playing her heart out,” Finch recalled. “The other girls were just so impressed with her energy and intensity on the court.” 

That camp performance drew the eye of the Little Rock coaching staff. Eventually, they wanted to talk to Francis and her family about potentially joining Little Rock’s Team. As Francis and Finch talked to the Trojan coaching staff, they knew any collegiate decision had to be more than just about basketball, finding the right fit was paramount.

“When the coaches sat down with us, it was all about what Coach Foley said,” Finch explained. “He talked about being able to work with her, loving her defense, her attitude and her athleticism. I was crying because to hear something so positive come from a coach, especially one as legendary as Coach Foley, it was just amazing.”

FINDING HER NEW PATH

As Francis begins to find her place in the world, she begun to think about what would be her path in life. She was still in search of her reason. When she sat down to evaluate the things in life she enjoyed, a few stood out. 

She knew she enjoyed physical fitness. Francis also enjoyed the feeling she got when she could help others, whether it be assisting them in achieving something or even just being there to listen. She also had first-hand knowledge of some of the unspoken challenges that children encounter, including the fear of even speaking up when dark thoughts enter the mind.

Then came the idea of meshing those things together. The seed of an idea called ALF – her initials – was planted in her brain. So began a process that still continues to this day of creating an organization encompassing of communication and fitness, one that is open and welcoming to those that have a story to tell, whether it be dramatic or mundane.

“What I have found through my process is that everyone has a story,” Francis said. “Every story is different but I want to create a place where every story can be heard without fear of anything.”

A NEW CHAPTER WITH NEW SETBACKS

As Francis began her collegiate career at Little Rock, she was faced with yet another major life transition. The last one, moving in with her mother, took her years to adjust. Now she had another transition to make as she left the Metroplex for Little Rock.

Going from a high school senior to a college freshman is challenging enough without the emotional toil Francis has been through. To add that trauma on top of that made her matriculation at UA Little Rock a daunting task mentally. 

She hit that challenge head on and there were some good days and some bad days. Remarkably, she navigated the challenges of that freshman year still without disclosing much of her past to her coaches or teammates. She just wasn’t ready.

“We had to tell the coaches a little of what was going on with Angelique because they needed to know, but they don’t know everything,” Finch said.

For most of her freshman year, Francis did the best she could to adjust to a new team, a new coaching staff and new challenges. Occasionally, she would have panic attacks. But she found an outlet and a person to talk to in those moments in the team’s athletic trainer, Jacob Hoy.

“Jacob is such a wonderful person, he is like a big brother to me,” Francis said. “Anytime I was having a panic attack or trouble breathing or trouble with whatever was going on, I knew I could call him and he’d answer. He is always there to listen and to talk to me. He’s probably the only person that knows everything I’ve been through.”

A SMILE SLOWLY EMERGES

Look at Francis now and you’re more likely to see a smile on her face than ever before. For most college aged kids, that is a given. For Francis, that is an achievement. 

It has not come easily and it is just another step in her life’s journey, which is now – thankfully – trending in a more positive way. 

She may not be fully healed from the trauma she has survived – can anyone really? – but she has found herself in a much more stable place as her sophomore season hits tournament time. 

Francis is, however, in a place where she wants to continue to pay it forward and be a resource for those who are experiencing the same struggles – depression and thoughts of suicide – that she has faced.

“There are times where I'm still struggling and I'm 19,” said Francis. “Before I was struggling and I was 13 years old. Back then to sitting here now, it's crazy. I never thought I would be here and I want to still be here. But yet, I had to fight for my life.”

She has and continues to survive because that’s what she knows. Now she needs others to know she can be there for them.

“There is a lot that people go through that they hide,” continued Francis. “The reason I'm sitting here is to tell that story. At the end of the road, as hard as it was, there is a purpose for everything. I believe my purpose is, through everything I've been though, to speak up and tell others that I am here and I got you.”

It begins with a listening ear and an open mind. And it ends with finding a love for yourself, an idea that had once seemed so foreign to Francis but now is an emerging possibility.

“At the end of the day, you have to love yourself,” Francis emphatically explained. “I have had to literally do a 180 on myself and I'm still going through it. That is the hardest part as people just don’t see what you are going through and it is so tough to speak up when you think no one is listening.”

As her dream of ALF slowly comes to fruition, Francis will be there to listen to anyone’s story with an open mind and a loving heart. 

The National Suicide Prevention Hotline can be reached 24 hours a day at 1-800-273-8255 and provides free and confidential support for people in distress, providing prevention and crisis resources for you or your loved ones. 

For the latest information on Little Rock Basketball, make sure to check out LRTrojans.com. You can also find the team on social media at @LittleRockWBB on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.

#LittleRocksTeam