The William H. Kibbie-ASUI Activity Center (commonly known as the Kibbie Dome) 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 and is used for intercollegiate competition in four sports: football, tennis, indoor track and field, and soccer, and had also been used for basketball until the 2021 opening of the nearby Idaho Central Credit Union Arena (ICCU Arena).
The Kibbie Dome opened 51 years ago as an outdoor concrete football stadium in October 1971, built on the same site of the demolished wooden Neale Stadium. Following the 1974 football season, a barrel-arched roof and vertical end walls were added and the stadium re-opened as an enclosed facility in September 1975. With just 16,000 permanent seats, it was the second smallest home stadium for college football in Division I FBS (formerly Division I-A) from 1997 to 2017. In 2018, Idaho football rejoined the FCS and is a member of the Big Sky Conference.
From February 2001 until the opening of ICCU Arena, the Kibbie Dome was reconfigured for basketball games and was referred to as the Cowan Spectrum, seating 7,000. The elevation of the playing surface is 2,610 feet above sea level.
The stadium has also served as the home of the Vandal basketball teams, providing increased seating capacity over the venerable War Memorial Gymnasium (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 first basketball game was played 46 years ago against WSU on January 21, 1976, commemorated with an alumni game which included Vandal great Gus Johnson. The main court was originally smooth tartan rubber, poured directly onto the pavement floor, resulting in a very hard and unforgiving surface, but resulted in a tremendous home court advantage under head coach Don Monson in the early 1980s. After nine seasons, it was replaced with a conventional hardwood floor in the fall of 1984, acquired from the University of Arizona in Tucson. During basketball games, the converted Kibbie Dome was referred to as the Cowan Spectrum, named for Bob and Jan Cowan, who financed the final basketball configuration, from 2000 until basketball moved to the new ICCU Arena. Since February 2001, the basketball layout was 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 OES scoreboards were placed over the north and south stands during games.
During the early 1980s, with Don Monson as head coach, the Kibbie Dome was considered one of the 20 toughest home courts in college basketball by Sports Illustrated. Additional temporary seating was gradually increased on the north basketball sideline (center of the football field) and attendance exceeded 11,000 for several games during the 1982-83 season. From January 1980 to February 1983, the Vandals won 43 consecutive home games, and Monson's home record in his final four seasons was 51-2 (.962). A Big Sky record attendance of 11,800 witnessed the streak end against Montana.
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 in 1996, then to the WAC in 2005 before returning its non-football sports to the Big Sky in 2014, and football in 2018.)
In October 2021, Idaho opened the new Idaho Central Credit Union Arena, north of the Kibbie Dome, to house men's and women's basketball. The first game in the new arena was a men's exhibition against NAIA member Evergreen State on October 29. The first regular-season game was a men's game against Long Beach State, coached by Don Monson's son Dan, himself a former Vandals football player.
