What “PAUSE” Is Doing In Your Team Room

If you’ve been coaching male athletes in the past five years or so, you have heard a young man on your team use “PAUSE.”

You’ve experienced someone on your roster (maybe even one of your coaches) in a deep conversation, mid-story, seemingly randomly divertiung to get in a quick “PAUSE”.

You’ve been in a team circle or team room and while a teammate is talking, someone from the audience says “pause” and the roster erupts in laughter.

If you were unaware of what that was about, this post is PERFECT for you to upgrade your understanding AND start pushing back on.

First, it’s probably easiest to say this is a 2020s version of “That’s what she said.” Think of Jim Halpert looking at the camera in “The Office” every time Michael Scott utters that line and you’ll get a physical representation of what that “pause” comment is doing in your team room.

It’s trying to police sexual innuendo, sexual suggestion and, as the original IG author Lewis Wedlock mentions above, often ends up normalizing homophobia. Any suggestion from an otherwise unrelated comment like “You sucked that shake down fast” or “That’s way to big for me” is going to get a “pause” call and a giggle festival started. And while sometimes it will lean towards a heterosexual pornification of everyday language, it most likely will be rooted in Manbox type gate keeping of any “softness” or “gayness” in your team room.

I won’t ruin Lewis’ post (after all, I want you read it with your staff and players slide by slide and lean into it’s conversation-starting statements), so after going through that exercise, roll out our usual Coach Prompts and Player Prompts to truly examine WHERE and HOW this casual “interruption” is showing up in your team spaces.

Coach Prompts

• When “pause” gets called in our team space, what exactly is being identified as funny, embarrassing, or unacceptable?

• When have you heard “pause” used to police something a player said or how he expressed himself—and what message did the laughter that followed send?

• How can you interrupt “pause” culture without simply becoming the adult who bans another word, and instead help players understand what the joke is doing?

Player Prompts

• Think about the last few times someone said “pause.” What was actually being joked about?

• What does someone have to say or do in your group to earn a “pause”? What does that tell you about what your group considers acceptable masculinity?

• If a teammate were gay—or simply worried about being perceived as gay—how might hearing “pause” over and over change what he feels comfortable saying or doing around the team?