Kibbie Dome

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ASUI-Kibbie Activity Center
Kibbie Dome, Cowan Spectrum (basketball)
Location S Rayburn St
Moscow, ID 83844
Broke ground 1971
Opened 1975
Owner University of Idaho
Operator University of Idaho
Surface RealGrass Pro
Tenants University of Idaho Vandals
(Football, basketball, tennis, indoor track & field)
Capacity 16,000 (football)
7,000 (basketball)

The ASUI-Kibbie Activity Center is a multi-purpose indoor athletic stadium on the campus of the University of Idaho in Moscow, Idaho. It is the home of the Idaho Vandals of the Western Athletic Conference and is used for intercollegiate competition in four sports: football, basketball, tennis, and indoor track & field.

More commonly known as the Kibbie Dome, the venue with a wooden barrel-arched roof opened in September 1975, enclosing an outdoor concrete football stadium built four years earlier on the site of the demolished Neale Stadium, seen in this early 1950s photo. With just 16,000 permanent seats, it is currently the smallest home stadium for football in Division I-A. Since February 2001, the Kibbie Dome has been reconfigured for basketball games and is referred to as the Cowan Spectrum, seating 7,000. The elevation of the playing surface is 2610 feet (795 m) above sea level. [1]

Contents

[edit] Construction

The stadium was built in stages and took several years to complete. Originally, the new football stadium was to be outdoors and seat over 23,000 spectators, with an adjacent 10,000 seat indoor arena for basketball. The PCAA conference had been launched in 1969 and Idaho was attempting to join, but political wrangling in the state legislature and subsequent budget cuts caused a change in the scope of the stadium project. This ensured that Idaho could not make the move to the PCAA; the Vandals would have to remain in the Big Sky Conference with the other state schools, Idaho State and new member Boise State.[2]

The revised plan was for a smaller capacity football stadium, to be enclosed to allow use as a basketball arena (and indoor track and tennis as well). This multi-purpose concept had been recently used at Idaho State in Pocatello, where the Minidome had opened in 1970.

Construction on the concrete grandstands started in February 1971, [3] after a fire destroyed the previously condemned wooden Neale Stadium in November 1969[4]. The stadium, which opened in 1936, had been condemned the summer before the 1969 season, and the Vandal football team played its limited home schedule for the next two seasons at WSU's Rogers Field in Pullman.

After a fire significantly destroyed that stadium's south grandstand in April 1970, WSU played its 1970 home games in Spokane at Joe Albi Stadium, but the Vandals remained at Rogers in Pullman for four "home" games. The Vandals' game with WSU that September 19th in Spokane was dubbed the "Displaced Bowl." [5] A lopsided 44-16 win for the Cougars, it was WSU's only victory in a stretch of 22 games.

Back in Moscow, the "New Idaho Stadium" was ready by the fifth game 1971 football season, a 40-3 victory over Idaho State on October 9th. The Vandals went 8-3 in 1971, which included a school-record eight game winning streak, and won the Big Sky title. For its first four seasons (1971-74), the "new Idaho Stadium" was outdoors. In the summer of 1972, a Tartan Turf field with a roll-up mechanism was installed. The arched roof and vertical end walls were completed in time for the 1975 football season's home opener on September 27th, unfortunately a 14-29 loss to Idaho State.

The enclosed stadium was renamed that year for William H. Kibbie, a construction executive from Salt Lake City and a primary benefactor of the project; he contributed $300,000 to initiate the funding drive.[6][7]

Bill Kibbie (1918-88), originally of Bellevue, Idaho, was a UI student for less than a month in 1936 before he had to leave the university, due to family hardship. [8] He entered the construction business, and after service as a B-24 pilot in World War II, was very successful as the head of a major contracting company in Utah. [9] The acronym "ASUI" is for the "Associated Students of the University of Idaho," the student government.

When the university announced it would enclose its football stadium, the fledgling Trus-Joist Company of Boise bid on and got the project. While steel and aluminum were the products of the day for domes and large unsupported buildings, Trus-Joist saw the UI stadium as a chance to demonstrate the strength, durability, and economy of their engineered wood products. From the final design to the end of construction, the enclosure project took just 10 months and $1 million to complete. In 1976, the Kibbie Dome roof won the “Structural Engineering Achievement Award” from the American Society of Civil Engineers.*[10] Trus-Joist was acquired by Weyerhaeuser in 1999. [11]

The Kibbie Dome's roof spans 400 feet (122 m) from sideline-to-sideline, and its maximum height is 150 feet (45 m) above the hashmarks. (Holt Arena, on the campus of Idaho State University in Pocatello, has an opposite geometry: its arched roof spans the length of the football field, rather than its width, resulting in a very low roof at the end lines and goal posts.)

Soon after completion, problems arose with the roof's exterior. The 4.5 acre (1.8 hectare) outer surface was applied as a sprayed foam, and was found to be unsuitable for the extended annual temperature range of northern Idaho. The significant expansion and contraction caused fractures; leaks were occurring and wood rot was a potential problem by 1980. After an extended period of finger-pointing and threatened legal action, an out-of-court settlement was reached. A new superstructure with a composite roof was built over the original. Completed in the summer of 1982, the second roof shielded the first and solved the problem.

[edit] Football

The Kibbie Dome officially seats just 16,000 for football, making it the smallest venue in Division I-A, although a record crowd of 17,600 was recorded for a game with Boise State in November 1989, during the school's I-AA Big Sky era. The football field runs an unorthodox east-west, with the press box on the south side.

For two and a half seasons, 1999-2001, the Vandals used Martin Stadium as its home field, as Idaho transitioned from Division I-AA to I-A. When Dennis Erickson returned as head football coach in 2006, there was talk of adding a second deck to the stadium to increase the football seating to 25,000, and building a new basketball arena. In February 2007, the state board of education appropriated funds to study expansion possibilities. On December 6th, the board approved funding to begin design work for $52 million in improvements, including an expansion to 20,000 seats, lowering the elevation of the playing field, and other various safety and spectator improvements. [12]

When not used for football, the former astroturf football field was rolled up in about an hour to reveal 93,000 square feet (2.13 acres, 0.86 hectares) of polyurethane tartan surface which is used for indoor tennis and track & field. The five-lane track is 290 meters (317 yds) in length, and 9 tennis courts are lined on its infield. Basketball and volleyball courts are also lined on the tartan infield. The astroturf was spooled onto a large field-width reel at the base of the west wall.

In 1990, the original synthetic turf (Tartan Turf) of 1972 was replaced after 18 seasons. In the summer of 2007, the Kibbie Dome's astroturf was replaced with RealGrass Pro, similar to Field Turf, a next-generation infilled synthethic turf. [13] Unlike the carpet-like astroturf, the infilled synthetic turf is not easily rolled up in a continuous reel, and must be removed in sections. The turf sections are five yards in width, running from sideline to sideline, attached to each other with velcro [14] Other stadiums with RealGrass Pro include the Dallas Cowboys' Texas Stadium and the Alamodome in San Antonio.

[edit] Basketball

The stadium has also served as the home of the Vandal basketball teams, providing increased seating capacity over the venerable Memorial Gym (built in 1928), a block to the east. The basketball court is positioned at midfield on the south sideline, in front of the press box and the south grandstand, with temporary seating on the north, east, and west. The main court was originally smooth tartan rubber, poured directly onto the concrete floor, resulting in very hard and unforgiving surface. It was replaced with a conventional hardwood floor in the fall of 1983. The wood floor is placed directly over the top of the old tartan floor, and is assembled from small sections.

During basketball games, the converted Kibbie Dome is now referred to as the Cowan Spectrum, named for Bob and Jan Cowan, who financed the current configuration. Since February 2001, the new basketball layout has been separated from the rest of the stadium by massive black curtains to give the court a more intimate "stadium-within-a-stadium" feel, with a reduced seating capacity of 7,000. Temporary Daktronics scoreboards are placed over the north and south stands during games.

During the early 1980s, with Don Monson as head coach (the father of current Long Beach State head coach Dan Monson; both are UI alumni), the Kibbie Dome was considered one of the 20 toughest home courts in college basketball by Sports Illustrated, often exceeding over 11,000 in attendance. From January 1980 to February 1983, the Vandals won 43 consecutive games at the Kibbie Dome, and Monson's home record in his final four seasons was 51-2 (.962). The venue hosted three Big Sky Conference men's basketball tournaments (by winning the regular season title), in 1981, 1982, and 1993. (The Vandals departed the Big Sky for the Big West Conference in 1996, then moved to the WAC in 2005.)

[edit] Additions

The Kibbie Dome has undergone a couple of significant additions. In August 1982, seven years after the stadium was enclosed, the East End Addition was completed, providing the entire athletic department with locker rooms, offices, a weight room, athletic training facility, and equipment room.

In April 2004, the facilities were again enhanced with the addition of the 8000 square foot Vandal Athletic Center, home to the Norm and Becky Iverson Speed and Strength Center; the renovation of the men’s and women’s basketball, football, and volleyball locker rooms, and the addition of a state-of-the-art hydrotherapy pool (ARC). [15]

[edit] Adjacent practice fields

August 2005 saw the installation of SprinTurf on the former natural grass practice field east of the Kibbie Dome. The days of "off-limits" are gone, as UI students now have state-of-the-art playing fields available for year-round use. The $1.2 million SprinTurf project included lighting and fencing. A field that previously had just 300 usable hours annually as an "intercollegiate athletics only" field (for natural turf varsity football practice), is now available for up to 2000 hours per year. The project was funded through the Kibbie Dome turf replacement fund.

The two 75-yard fields are adequate for team practice for football (and soccer, lacrosse, rugby, and other sports) as well as for intramural competition, but short enough to have two fields in the space available. Each field is a full half-field (with end zone & goal post) plus an additional 15 yards beyond the 50-yard line. An unmarked 10 yard median separates the two fields; the total length, with end zones, is 160 yards. The fields run north-south. The former natural turf fields were lined as a regulation football field running north-south, with a half field at the north end running east-west. An added benefit of the synthetic surface is an estimated $50,000 annual savings in field maintenance. [16]

[edit] Nearby facilities

On the west side of the Kibbie Dome is the Dan O'Brien outdoor track & field stadium. South of the Dome is the university's 18-hole golf course, a challenging track due to its rolling Palouse terrain. A par-72 course, its back tees measure 6637 yards, with a course rating of 72.4, and a 135 slope rating. [17] The course opened in 1933 with nine holes, and expanded in 1968. [18] To the east is the Memorial Gymnasium, the swim center, the physical education building, and six outdoor tennis courts. Additional tennis courts are on sites on the east side of campus.

[edit] External links

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Basketball Arenas of the Western Athletic Conference
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Football stadiums of the Western Athletic Conference