I did my undergraduate work at South Dakota State University (Fall 1972 through Spring, 1976). In 1976, the North Central Conference Indoor Track and Field Championship was held at the UNI-Dome.. It was one of the very early events held in the UNI-Dome and the facility easily handled the relatively large indoor meet. At the time, there wasn't a better indoor facility in the Midwest.
I remember the meet well, particularly walking into the facility for the first time. The SDSU Jackrabbits were the two-time defending indoor conference champs. On the way to Cedar Falls, we were driving in blizzard conditions across I-90 in Southern Minnesota when three of the five or six station wagons transporting team members were involved in an accident, which required a trip to the hospital for three of our athletes and a delay in the start of the track meet (by a vote of the coaches--all conference coaches agreed to delay the start by two or three hours, except USD's coach voted to proceed with the meet as originally scheduled.)
My recollection is the original UNI-Dome track was a 220-yard track (not a 200-meter track). I was scheduled to run the 880-yard run and couldn't imagine running four laps around what appeared to be very close to a quarter-mile outdoor track. The scale of the facility seemed huge.
When the UNI-Dome held the NCC Indoor meet in 1976, the only conference schools with indoor tracks were Mankato State (I think the track was a hard-surface 180-yard track with slightly banked corners constructed in the late 1960s); and North Dakota State (the Bison facility has just been replaced in the past year . . . it was a 220-yard track that opened in about 1971). The next NCC school to add an indoor facility following the opening of the UNI-Dome, was the University of South Dakota when its DakotaDome opened in 1979. As you're likely aware, the DakotaDome was similar in design to the UNI-Dome, although considerably smaller.
Your history of the UNI-Dome was a fun read. I had met Stan Sheriff when I was a freshman in college. I remember thinking he was a guy who could get things done. I remember when UNI decided to leave the NCC and NCAA College Division (may have been Division II when the actual move occurred). I questioned whether SDSU should try to go with UNI, but I didn't think we could swing the financial commitment.
---James C. Roby, September 2015