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She's a WNBA referee and a ballroom dancer.
Angelica Suffren's remarkable double life - WNBA referee Angelica Suffren leads a double life as a competitive ballroom dancer.
- Suffren began officiating after a college basketball career where she was known for calling out fouls.
- She balances a hectic travel schedule of refereeing games with training and competing in ballroom dance.
- Suffren hopes that sharing her passion for dance will help people see sports officials as human.
At work, Angelica Suffren prefers to avoid the spotlight.
As a WNBA referee, her job is to be invisible.
Thats not the case off the court, when Suffren takes center stage as a competitive ballroom dancer.
On the dance floor, all eyes are on Suffren and her partner.
Its 100% a completely different world, she said.
At the end of the day, I have to remind myself that people want to see something beautiful.
They want to be moved.
No one is rooting for you to fail, so that also makes me want to give.
So giving more of myself on the dance floor will hopefully reach someone in a way that I didnt know they needed.
Every week, Suffren officiates one or two WNBA games in different cities.
At the start or end of the week, she flies to New York to train with her ballroom dancing partner/coach, Aleksandar Vukosavljevic.
If shes lucky, she can spend a few days at home in Atlanta to recharge.
She also competes in ballroom dancing at least once a month, sometimes sandwiched between basketball games.
Its a hectic schedule, Suffren admits.
No day or week is the same.
It takes effort and energy and lots of planning, she said.
It almost makes it like a game to make the puzzle pieces fit together.
Suffren has been a referee for more than 25 years.
In addition to the WNBA, shes officiated games in the NBA G League, Basketball Africa League, FIBA competitions and NCAA Division I womens college basketball (including the 2024 NCAA Championship game between South Carolina and Iowa).
Suffren called fouls in her own games.
Then she started officiating for others Suffren, a former college basketball player, never predicted this career for herself.
But others did.
At Austin Peay State University in Clarksville, Tennessee, Suffren was a mouthy player who called fouls and travels when she saw them during her games.
My senior year, there were officials officiating my games who told me, Oh, youre going to be a referee, Suffren recalled.
I was like, Who wants to be a referee? Thats not cool.
Then one day after her season had ended, Suffren was shooting around in the schools intramural gym when the director offered her $10 to referee the mens intramural championship game.
She reluctantly accepted and never looked back.
There was definitely a push to get college athletes into officiating at the time, particularly women, Suffren said.
I just happened to come along at that time and I was sort of pushed along kind of fast.
Ballroom dancing didnt enter Suffrens life until three years ago.
On a date, someone asked Suffren about her hobbies outside of work and she realized she didnt have an answer.
For reasons she cant explain, dance popped into her head.
She Googled ballroom dance in Atlanta, found the first search result and went to try it out.
'I get to wear this in real life!' Ballroom glamour a contrast to ref's role Suffren fell in love with dance immediately.
She vibes with the music, artists like Nat King Cole and Ella Fitzgerald who were already in her regular rotation.
She discovered that dance, like refereeing, requires extraordinary awareness and attention to detail.
Its also helped her learn more about herself.
Everything has to be intentional (in dance), Suffren said.
So theres a certain level of awareness that I have to have about myself.
You think you know yourself at this big age, and then you try something new and you realize theres so many more things about yourself that you have yet to explore.
And that, I think, is the biggest gift that dance has given me.
Suffren dances a style of ballroom called American Smooth, which encompasses the waltz, tango, foxtrot, and Viennese waltz.
She affectionately describes competitions like the Capitol ball scene from The Hunger Games movie, because the opulent environment is in such stark contrast to the world outside.
You walk into the ballroom and theres glitz and glamour and opulence and rhinestones, Suffren said.
Its so glamorous and completely opposite from my normal life.
In one of my rooms upstairs I have all of my gowns, and sometimes I walk in and Im like, Man, I get to wear this in real life! As a former college athlete, Suffren also enjoys the competitive side of ballroom and shes quite good at it.
Last August, Suffren and Vukosavljevic won first place at the 2025 Capital Dancesport Championship in Washington, D.C.
This spring, they won gold at the Emerald Ball in Los Angeles, one of three major American ballroom dancing events.
Still, Suffren stresses that shes by no means a professional dancer.
Im learning every day, she said.
Its a completely different side of my brain.
It is absolutely art, but it is unbelievably technical.
I practice a lot, so the success Ive enjoyed up until this point I totally attribute to my practice of course my athletic ability, too, but I put a lot of time and effort into it.
Suffrens officiating schedule is even busier during the WNBA offseason, when she referees womens college basketball games, but she still finds time to squeeze in solo rehearsals on the road.
She has a go-to practice ballroom in every city, ranging from actual ballrooms to dance studios to a YMCA yoga room.
Shell even work on choreography while waiting for her clothes to dry in a laundromat.
The frequent practice allows Suffren to marry muscle memory and emotion on the dance floor, unlocking freedom while maintaining precision.
Even though I get butterflies sometimes before games, I can always go back to my training.
With dance its the same thing, Suffren said.
I still have butterflies when I walk onto the dance floor, but if I know my routine, I know that I have a certain level of freedom in that discipline.
If a referee does their job well, no one notices them.
They usually only get attention if they make a mistake.
In dance, however, mistakes are accepted as part of the process.
Suffren views dance performance as a give-and-take with the audience, and she hopes that sharing more of herself will inspire basketball fans to act with compassion.
If this makes people see officials as human, Im all for it, she said.