April marks the one-year anniversary of the University of Montana’s announcement of the new inflatable sports practice facility. Placed on top of the old fields adjacent to the Adams Center parking lot, the dome represents the future for Grizzly Athletics. But for intramural sports, clubs and student groups, members have instead watched the transformation of the once-bustling fields frequently occupied by diverse groups turn into an inaccessible construction zone.
“The construction being done for the sports dome has majorly impacted our ability to practice and find spaces to host events, as we usually use the fields to scrimmage with community and alumni throughout our season,” said Aspen Nord, representing the men’s and women’s ultimate Frisbee teams.
Groups have resorted to using the Dornblaser fields. However, with club soccer and a variety of intramurals all fighting to use the space, “figuring out a schedule that works for all of us has been extremely difficult,” Nord said. Kapono Mossman, senior and longtime member of the UM Rugby team, added that Montana State University still gets support and use of their soccer fields.
Gregory White, president of the UM Rugby team, said he emailed the administrator of Dornblaser who runs scheduling for the field, but received nothing back, exacerbating the struggle. Not to mention, “It’s like a crap field in the back, it’s got like ditches in it, but it’s the only thing that works sometimes,” White said. “You could break an ankle in there.”
Unable to access campus spaces, teams looked to city spaces such as the Fairgrounds or Fort Missoula, which Mossman argues are worse.
“There’s gravel all over the fields,” Mossman said. “We’re like kicking it up at each other or if you fall over, you’re getting scraped up.”
Throughout his years on the team, he’s also seen how the location change has impacted team recruitment and member retention.
“The majority of our players live in dorms and I know not all freshmen have cars. It would be easier to have something on campus, not off campus,” Mossman said.
According to Google Maps, the walk from campus to Fort Missoula would take over an hour and to the Fairgrounds just under 40 minutes.
Mossman said the team has always had the desire to host a rugby match at the University, especially since they have consistently traveled to places like MSU or Montana Tech to compete.
“There used to be a lot of fields that could’ve been a possibility, but guess who took that? Football. With their inflatable dome,” Mossman said.
According to a UM press release, the facility will include a regulation-size football field, four 150-yard sprint lanes, two long jump pits, two pole vaults and a hammer, javelin, discus and shot-put area for athletes. It will also host practices for football, soccer, softball and track. UM Athletics Director Kent Haslam said in the report that “this facility will benefit every Grizzly student-athlete for years to come,” but whether or not clubs outside of football, soccer, softball and track will be able to access this space is uncertain.
“We have heard that we won’t even be able to use the sports dome when it is done, since other sports like track and football will get first dibs on the space. So it’s kind of a lose-lose situation for us,” Nord said.
The Kaimin reached out to Haslam for comment through two emails and a phone call and he did not respond.
The new dome isn’t the only recent construction project on campus. However, according to UM Sustainability Director Eva Rocke, the planning process for the inflatable dome was atypical.
For the new museum, dining hall and residence hall, funding comes from a variety of sources, but the bulk of it is bonds. But the dome was completely funded through a group of private donors, meaning it didn’t go through “our usual channels of project review and design,” Rocke said.
The museum, dining hall, and residence hall are all LEED-certified buildings. LEED is an acronym for Leadership, Energy and Environmental Design, which is the standard for sustainable building design and construction with three levels: silver, gold and platinum. The Payne Native American Center was the University’s first LEED-certified building and has been rated platinum, and the museum was rated gold. The dome is not subject to the LEED certification process.
“Most of our construction meets this quite rigorous standard of sustainable design, but the sports dome is a bit of an outlier,” Rocke said. “To be totally candid, I am disappointed that it doesn’t appear that sustainability or the environmental impact footprint of this building was considered at all in its selection and the ultimate decision to move forward with it.”
Rocke’s main concern with the inflatable structure was the use of natural gas to inflate it and electricity for lighting and heating. The University’s utilities engineer did a study, and it was found the dome’s estimated annual electricity use will be lower than UM expected, with less than half of the amount of energy of similarly operated buildings, like the Missoula College’s river campus building. Despite the positive study results, any construction on campus will still lead to an increase in UM’s annual CO2 emission footprint.
Rocke does not see this as the reason to worry, however, as a new heating plant on campus should cut back on the University’s carbon footprint. Currently, the majority of the University’s energy is sourced through Northwestern Energy. However, with the new plant, the use of burning natural gas to spin turbines should make UM’s carbon footprint lower, without considering the addition of the new buildings.
Rocke believes UM’s carbon emissions will remain the same or even lower with the new plant, but cannot be sure until construction is completed. According to previous Kaimin reporting, the new plant is set to be completed this summer.
Whether it is accessibility for club sports or its effect on climate change, the predicted harms or benefits of the inflatable sports dome cannot be verified until its completion and operation. The dome was predicted to be ready by the fall of 2023, but now is expected to be ready for the public in August.
