MISSOULA — Athletic director Kent Haslam stood yards from Montana’s indoor practice facility as the deflated bubble covered nearly the entire football field.
He was expecting late Wednesday that the last remaining portion of the bubble would be back in time for reinflation to be complete by the Grizzlies’ game Saturday. When it’s back up, it’ll be over two months since a tear in the fabric forced the covering to be taken down and shipped out for repairs.
That the facility had to be partially deconstructed less than a year after it opened in October raised the question of why UM chose a temporary instead of a permanent setup. It was accentuated because of the timing as rival Montana State unveiled its permanent structure about two weeks later.
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“You’re like, do you keep fundraising or do you take what you can get that helps you immediately?” Haslam said. “The decision we made was let’s take something that helps us immediately for roughly a third of the cost. You’d love to have a permanent building if you could, but you also have to be realistic and take on a facility you feel comfortable that you fundraised for.
“It’s expensive to build indoor facilities. We went with what we thought was best for us. It should serve us for a long time.”
Montana had lower upfront expenses as the project cost $10.2 million, which was entirely privately funded. A bubble also came with an anticipated shorter construction time than a permanent building, although delays came from city permitting issues, weather and reworking the base under the turf.
By comparison, Montana State spent $26.5 million dollars on its facility. North Dakota State’s permanent facility cost $52 million in 2022 while South Dakota State’s was $32 million in 2014. Like UM, all were fully financed by donors.
Montana’s facility has a full-length football playing area with a 100-yard field plus two full end zones. Montana State’s has an 80-yard field plus two end zones. The larger interior has allowed UM to accommodate over 160 student-athletes from multiple sports teams at the same time, Haslam said.
The Cats do have a track oval around their field, although it is 300 meters, not the NCAA-regulation length of 400 meters for outdoors or 200 meters for indoors. The Griz, meanwhile, have sprint lanes on both sides and have areas for all types of jumps and throws.
That all might not have been possible if the Griz opted for a permanent facility due to space limits. Parking lots are at the east and west ends of the building, a street runs along the south side and the outdoor River Bowl practice field that the football team frequently uses runs along the north side.
“I think we would’ve had to reduce the footprint of it and shrunk the yardage in there and certainly not had as much track space down at the other end,” Haslam said. “It was weighing out cost versus size and how many student-athletes you could serve.
“The byproduct was a larger space that we could do, which, less expensive to build, more training space, that’s a win.”
The Montana Grizzlies football team stretches before a practice at the Grizzly Indoor Practice Facility on the University of Montana campus in Missoula on March 3, 2025.
SHANNA MADISON, Missoulian
The issue with the bubble was a couple seams bursting, which Haslam said he was told “is not completely unusual the first year it’s being used” as part of the natural contraction and expansion processes. A few more weak-looking seams were noticed when Yeadon Fabric Domes inspected it, he added.
The bubble isn’t one big piece of material but is instead made up of sections. The size of the bubble is also “so much larger than the typical ones they do,” Haslam said, so there were more seams that could possibly have a problem. That adds to a potential lack of durability compared to a permanent facility.
Montana had no costs for shipping or repairing the bubble. It was under full warranty with Minneapolis-based Yeadon, Haslam said, although the covered amount will diminish over the warranty’s 20-year period. That is how long he expects the bubble covering to last before needing to be replaced. He anticipates having to replace the turf field before getting a new bubble.
When the bubble is back, insulation will be added to pockets in the bubble and an air conditioner will be installed, which Haslam said were always part of the plan. Air conditioning will make the temperature more tolerable and provide cleaner air if there is smoke outside, he noted, while insulation will help retain heat in the winter, possibly reducing the higher operational costs of a bubble.
“You can sit around for years waiting to fundraise and not even be keeping up with inflation, or pull the trigger, get something built as functional, affordable and at its core gets done what you need to get done, and that was providing great space for our student-athletes to train,” Haslam said.
“Perfect can get in the way of really good, so let’s take really good. I can’t predict what we’d have fundraised, but I’d imagine we’d still be fundraising if we were still trying to go and we’d be that much further behind. Then who knows with inflation, constructions costs, all that stuff.”
Building a multi-purpose indoor facility had been a next step for the Griz to take in the continuing college athletics facilities “arms race” after they opened their state-of-the-art Champions Center for $14 million in 2017.
Lady Griz locker room construction, part of the facilities master plan, is underway, Haslam said. Next is remodeling the floor in the two auxiliary gyms. Down the road after that is planning to add tennis courts at South Campus.
Having quality facilities is one thing, but the quality of athletes on the teams practicing in there is another. The ability for schools to now share revenue with athletes adds to their equation about how to use their funds.
“We’ve made some massive facility overhauls and you get to the point where you’re like, OK, does your focus shift from building those facilities to raising money to pay student-athletes,” Haslam said. “That’s where you now start to shift. You can’t do things the way they were done in the past. You’ve got to have the facilities that they can train in.
“At this point now, you start to shift your focus into fundraising for those priorities that potentially can give you a competitive roster.”
Frank Gogola is the Senior Sports Reporter at the Missoulian and 406 MT Sports. Follow him on X @FrankGogola or email him at frank.gogola@406mtsports.com.
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