An afternoon with Little ESPY

Adam Koch and Ali Farokhmanesh watch a lot of movies. Their film ranking system, the "Three Movie Board,"  has earned national attention, having been mentioned in publications such as Sports Illustrated.

But the former University of Northern Iowa basketball players found themselves starring in what resembled a comedic version of a heist movie one afternoon this summer.

About one month earlier, the two were in Los Angeles where they received an Excellence in Sports Performance Yearly Award (ESPY) for their upset of top-ranked Kansas University in the NCAA Tournament.

Once they arrived back to Cedar Falls, however, the award went straight from Koch's hands to head coach Ben Jacobson, who kept it in his McLeod Center office.

Although Koch and Farokhmanesh had some time with their "baby" in LA and during the plane ride home, they still yearned for one last hurrah with their ESPY.

"Coach (Jacobson's) office is always locked unless he's there, so we had to wait for a day when he was there but not in his office," said Koch.

"We had to distract the other coaches, so one of us could go in and grab it and bring it to our house. So we did it and kind of thought that they saw us, but they didn't say anything. So we thought, ‘oh, they don't care, it's cool.'"

It seemed to be a successful mission. The two joined Adam's brother Jake and their friend Chelsie Hochstedler (of the UNI women's soccer team) and posed for numerous photos with their "baby ESPY." Some poses included taking "Little ESPY" for a wagon ride, giving Little ESPY a bath as well as Little ESPY's first time crawling.

"Ali wanted to do a photo shoot that showed the ESPY as a little baby, so Adam and I were like, ‘why not?' You only win an ESPY once in a lifetime," said Jake.

The following day Farokhmanesh stopped by the coaches' offices to discover the place in a frenzy.

"Derrik Netten, our Director of Basketball Operations, was in there freaking out because he noticed that the ESPY was gone," said Adam.

"So he had called the police and had some search on the whole city, trying to find the ESPY. They even brought in some of the cleaning staff and were calling them out."

Koch and Farokhmanesh immediately returned the award to the office.

"I don't think they were mad, but they were relieved that at least we had it," Adam said.

"We figured that we wouldn't get (the trophy) back again before we took it, and we definitely won't get it back after that."