When University of Michigan basketball star Yaxel Lendeborg raised a maize sign that read, “Shock the World Boys!” while cutting down the net following a national championship win, he was repeating history spurred by a group of alumni.
The phrase was once a rallying cry for the men’s basketball team after another U-M star, Glen Rice, uttered the saying during a press conference heading into the 1989 tournament. Their coach, Bill Frieder, had been fired after accepting another job, and the team marched into the Final Four under the guidance of Steve Fisher, who athletic director Bo Schembechler, HLLD’05, called a “Michigan Man.”
Five friends, Jeffrey Gelfand, ’88, Dave Owens, ’89, Neal Bush, ’88, Steve Rappaport, ’90, and Scott Park, ’86, decided to use what little money they had to head to Seattle to cheer on the Wolverines. Gelfand said they were using the phrase among themselves and decided to get a sign printed with it.
“When we won, we went courtside and gave the sign to some guy, who handed it to Glen Rice as he was climbing the ladder,” Gelfand said. “He got up there with the scissors, cut the net down, and held the sign up.”
It was a fun moment for the guys, but the next morning, Gelfand and his friends saw the image everywhere.
“That picture was in every newspaper in the country,” Gelfand said.
It became the iconic image of the championship. A giant version of it currently is on display at Crisler Center.
When U-M made runs to the Final Four in 2013 and 2018, Gelfand wanted to recreate the moment with his son, Zac Gelfand, ’18. At both finals, he brought versions of the sign, but the Wolverines lost both times. The duo came to Indianapolis on a mission to make sure the third time was a charm.
They brought three versions of the sign to Lucas Oil Stadium, hoping to get at least one to the team. As fate would have it, for the semifinal, they were sitting one row away from a cousin of Anna May, coach Dusty May’s wife. After the game, the cousin took Gelfand to Anna May, where he explained the story.
“She took two of the signs back to the hotel,” Gelfand said.
The father and son kept one sign to bring back to the stadium for the final game, where the Wolverines won their second-ever national championship, beating the University of Connecticut 69-63.
Just seven hours before maize and blue confetti rained down on the court, Gelfand predicted a version of the result.
“Nothing would please me more than to see Coach May give that sign to Yaxel [Lendeborg] when he cuts the nets down because I think that will bring life full circle,” he said.
And so, when the Wolverines took the stage to celebrate, the sign came out. And when it was time for Lendeborg to cut his piece of the net, he took the sign with him to recreate the iconic image.
For Zac Gelfand, all the family lore around the sign finally hit home while watching history repeat itself.
“After having heard this story for the last 30 years, I finally understand,” he said. “I’m honored to now be part of it.”
After the game, Jeff Gelfand called the moment “surreal.”
“I thought I had experienced the pinnacle of college basketball as a 23-year-old,” he said. “To be able to experience it again, 37 years later, as a 60-year-old with my 30-year-old Wolverine son … I have no words.”
Jeremy Carroll is the director of content and creative strategy for the Alumni Association of the University of Michigan.
