PROVO — On any given day at Brigham Young University's Indoor Practice Facility, a spectator could see a perfectly spiraled football pass, a well-placed goal kick or, on the rarest occasion, a model airplane soaring near the rafters.

While many students and fans view the facility as a haven meant exclusively for the Cougar football team, the truth is that a number of athletes with varying skills and specialties keep the indoor field busy year round.

"Football makes up just a small percentage of what takes place in there," said Matt Nix, athletic events coordinator at BYU. "We've got classes in there, extramurals and athletic teams ... It's been a great facility, and it has given a lot of our teams, not just football, an opportunity to play in a larger field environment during (bad weather)."

Currently, the Indoor Practice Facility (IPF) plays home to a number of different on-campus groups, meaning the building is booked solid from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. daily. The Cougar football team, however, is only guaranteed a three-hour block each day. The rest of the schedule is filled out by extramural sports, physical education classes, university athletic teams and BYU's extensive intramurals program.

"It originally was a building that, primarily during the winter, could be used by several different entities on campus, without having to worry about the weather," Nix said.

The IPF has fulfilled that original purpose and then some. The construction of the building fulfilled what many in the athletic department — including former BYU football coach LaVell Edwards — viewed as a long-standing need for the school as a whole.

"LaVell was very interested in seeing something like this happen in the early '80s," said Duff Tittle, associate athletic director at BYU. "We were basically the last Division-I football program in cold weather that didn't have an indoor facility."

Tittle said that the athletic department primarily had two overriding goals in constructing the IPF. First, to provide the university's athletic teams a chance to prepare to compete, even in case of inclement weather. Second, they felt an indoor facility would help with recruiting efforts by providing the types of facilities that would attract the best athletes.

"Being successful in athletics takes a commitment to facilities, along with great coaching and great athletes," Tittle said. "Those things are all represented in (the IPF and the new Student Athlete Building)."