Hall of Fame
Tennessee native Rochelle “Nikki” Goldthreate Houston is one of the most outstanding net performers in the history of FAMU Women’s Tennis.
Blessed with combination of power and quickness, Houston helped make the Lady Rattlers perennial contenders for the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference title during her career.
Named by the MEAC as one of its’ Top 50 Women’s Tennis Players of all-time after earning first team all-league honors in both 2001 and 2002.
Houston now serves as Director of Tennis at Florida A&M University, a move which at one time placed both the Men’s and the Women’s Tennis programs under her charge.
In 2017, she directed the Men’s Tennis team to its’ first Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference championship since 2000, and a previous year ago (2016), she led her revived Lady Rattler club to the MEAC Finals for the first time since the late 1990s.
Before her promotion in 2016, she mentored the Lady Rattler Tennis team from 2005 to the present.
Tennis is a family business for the Nashville-born Houston, whose father is a tennis coach and clinician in the Volunteer State, and was her first tennis coach.
Her work resume features work teaching and coaching the game at the youth levels and college levels in her native Tennessee and in Florida, while her competitive portfolio included a three-year stint playing on the Women’s Pro Tour (December 2002 to May,2005).
A 2002 graduate of Florida A&M with a B.S. in Computer Information Systems (minor in Business), Goldthreate also holds a Masters in Sports Management from FAMU (2006).
