Meet the DJs Bringing the Pride and the Party to the Valkyries’ Ballhalla

On a recent August afternoon, Golden State Valkyries guard Kaitlyn Chen looks up, bends her knees and releases the ball with a flick of the wrist, sinking another 3-pointer. Down the violet-tinted court, forward Cecilia Zandalasini runs drills, crouching low as she dribbles the ball between her legs.

Two hours before tip-off, the Valkyries are getting ready to take on the Phoenix Mercury. To hype up the players, DJ Shellheart is behind the decks, blending Soulja Boy’s nostalgic swag rap with the sad-boy crooning of Drake and the cocky, Memphis-inflected flow of GloRilla. By the time she hits a transition into E-40’s “Yay Area,” the players are clearly feeling themselves.

“What it dooo?” Kate Martin says as she jogs by and fist-bumps Shellheart, who has one eye on her DJ controller and the other on the players, making sure they’re responding to the music.

“I love a good DJ,” guard Tiffany Hayes tells KQED courtside, pointing to a music note tattoo on her ankle. “I think positive frequencies are important. … The DJ in here got us rockin’ right now, gettin’ ready for the game.”

In their inaugural season, the Valkyries have made WNBA history, consistently selling out Chase Center and breaking the record for most wins by an expansion team.

Along the way, they’ve cultivated an unmatched energy at “Ballhalla,” as their home arena is known. For the legions of fans packing Chase Center game after game — many of them women and queer people — the atmosphere rivals Oracle Arena during the Warriors’ 2010s championship run. Behind the decks, Bay Area nightlife fixtures Shellheart and LadyRyan provide the soundtrack, from warmups to the final buzzer.

“It’s 18,000 people I get to DJ in front of. It’s just motivated me so much,” Shellheart says, still visibly in disbelief that this is her life.

“It’s mainey,” she says. “I got chills.”

The rise of two nightlife luminaries

Shellheart and LadyRyan have been friends and colleagues in the Bay Area music scene for a decade, but they’ve taken different paths to Ballhalla. Shellheart, who’s been DJing since 2014, is a major figure in Bay Area hip-hop: She’s the tour DJ for Rexx Life Raj, the Berkeley-raised rapper.

When she’s not on the road, Shellheart spins at big-name events, sharing stages with stars like DJ Jazzy Jeff and Anderson .Paak, or DJing atop the San Francisco Bay Ferry for P-Lo’s album release party.

Her day party, Good Times, is an Oakland summer staple, and her annual Green Party — celebrating her birthday — recently packed San Francisco’s Midway with hundreds of partygoers in head-to-toe forest, chartreuse and lime green outfits to see Bay Area rap heavy-hitters DaBoii and Kamaiyah.

LadyRyan began spinning at Bay Area parties in 2006 and has become one of the most influential figures in Oakland’s LGBTQ+ scene. The party she co-founded 14 years ago, Soulovely — with its eclectic mix of hip-hop, house and multicultural sounds like dembow and dabke — continues to draw a passionate following of queer and trans people of color.

Over the summer, LadyRyan got thousands dancing at festivals like Stern Grove, where she most recently opened for the Pointer Sisters, and the San Francisco Hip-Hop Festival, headlined by Digable Planets. She hosts a weekly radio show on KALW, and on Sept. 7, she’ll perform at Oakland Pride. She and her partner, Dennise Acio, also recently opened Golden Ratio, a cozy, inclusive cocktail lounge with a dance floor and giant disco ball in downtown Oakland.

At Chase Center, LadyRyan and Shellheart hype the crowd during interactive T-shirt-throwing moments, timeouts and halftime. For both DJs, joining the Valkyries for their inaugural season is a career highlight.

“When people are there at their first game, and you catch that vibe, it makes you want to be involved in this major unison of excitement and celebration,” LadyRyan says. “You get there, and you’re like, ‘Oh my god, this is bigger than I thought it would be.’ They’re loud, and I’m loud with them.”

As they entered the sports world, both DJs found a supporter in the Warriors’ official DJ, D Sharp. A hip-hop veteran with the team since before their mid-2010s dynasty, D Sharp guided LadyRyan and Shellheart when they became the Valkyries’ official selectors.

“Especially in the male-dominated industry where people kind of look at each other as competition,” LadyRyan says, “he’s one of those DJs that knows that there’s enough for everybody.”

D Sharp has supported LadyRyan since they met almost a decade ago while performing at a pan-African festival. “She was killing it. And I was like, ‘Go, girl, do your thing,” he says. They bonded through mutual appreciation of each other’s DJing skills.

Speaking about Shellheart, D Sharp beams with pride, recalling her on the jumbotron at a Valkyries game for the first time. “They gave her a DJ spotlight and she murdered that s—,” he says.

The WNBA embraces queer culture

The Valkyries’ selection of Shellheart and LadyRyan comes as the WNBA increasingly embraces its queer players and fans. When the league debuted in 1997, it marketed a feminine, straight image; in the 2000s, when WNBA greats like Sue Wicks and Sheryl Swoopes came out, it rocked the sports world.

Fast-forward to 2025, LGBTQ+ players’ ability to be themselves is fueling the league’s growing mainstream popularity. During All-Star Weekend, charismatic Minnesota Lynx players Court Williams and Natisha “T” Hiedeman livestreamed off-court antics on their Twitch channel, StudBudz, to give fans unprecedented behind-the-scenes access for 72 hours.

They went viral, and The New York Times called them a “sensation.” During the same weekend, the Dallas Wings’ No. 1 overall draft pick Paige Bueckers hard-launched her relationship with University of Connecticut player Azzi Fudd, adding to a growing list of WNBA couples.

Shellheart was at the center of the All-Star Weekend, hanging with the players at the celebrations and afterparties. She’d DJed NBA All-Star parties before, but the W felt different. “Just seeing all the beautiful women, all the athletic women — being around women that are wealthy, you know?” she says.

“Shellheart, this is it,” she remembers telling herself. “This is where you belong.”

For LadyRyan, DJing on such a massive platform that centers women comes with a sense of pride. Her sets feature amped-up anthems like Beyoncé’s “My House” and Doechii’s “Nissan Altima.” “It just feels comfortable and really empowering,” she says.

At Chase Center during Valkyries games, it’s common to see Pride flags, fashion-forward queer friend groups and couples on dates. But LadyRyan warns that openness comes with backlash: a contingent of incel-ish MNBA fans routinely post sexist and homophobic comments on social media. In the past month, three men were arrested for throwing sex toys onto the court during WNBA games.

“If we weren’t discriminated against to begin with, we wouldn’t have to be proud about it, you know? We’re just not past it,” LadyRyan says. “As much as people wanna say everything’s fine, we still have an administration that is working against our existence.”

Seeing LadyRyan and DJ Shellheart in the DJ booth is especially meaningful to fans like Vanessa Hernandez, the co-founder of Valqueeries, an LGBTQ+ Valkyries fan club that organizes meet-ups and events at games and bars.

“As the Valkyries are still figuring out their identity, I hope in the future they still continue to lean on LadyRyan and Shellheart because they’re huge influences in the Bay Area, especially in the DJ community,” she says. “In the queer community at large, these people are so essential to us.”

At Chase Center, the Valkyries’ fandom transcends gender identity, sexual orientation, race and age. Shellheart knows that by bringing their skills, she and LadyRyan are inspiring the next generation of fans, no matter their background.

At her second-ever game spinning for the Valkyries, a young boy approached her for an autograph. “I was, like, ‘Oh, s—, nice,’” she says. “You just don’t know who you’re motivating.”