Armour Athletics is the kind of batting-cage facility usually found in bigger cities

Tim Harty, The Business Times

Brett Armour stands in one of the four batting-cage lanes at Armour Athletics, which he and his wife, Rachel, opened for business on Jan. 17 at 2892 North Ave., Unit A. The Armours wanted their facility to stand out for the quality of everything in it, something more often found in much larger cities than Grand Junction. Armour said his dream of developing such a facility goes back to his childhood and one of his oldest friends, Rylan Reed, who is an owner and general manager of Impact Sports Performance, a giant sports-training complex in Superior, CO. Reed served as a consultant on the Armour Athletics project, and Brett Armour said, “We had talked long about (Grand) Junction needs something like he’s doing on the Front Range, and he’s like, ‘Can you imagine if we’d had something when we were growing up like this?’” Photo by Tim Harty.

Too many times over too many years, Rachel Armour said she’s heard people suggest the finer things found in major metro areas aren’t meant to be in Grand Junction.

She’s tired of hearing, “Oh, it’s just Junction,” and it has to settle for less.

“Our kids, our community deserve nice things, and I wish we would shed the ‘good enough’ belief,” she said.

Rachel and her husband, Brett Armour, were determined not to settle when they started their new business, and now the community can see what they mean as they opened Armour Athletics on Jan. 17.

The couple, who met at Mesa State College (now Colorado Mesa University) in 2006, invested about $100,000 in a batting-cage facility for baseball and softball players. Instead of a warehouse with concrete floors, a few nets and mats and pitching machines that often suffice for a batting-cage facility, the difference at Armour Athletics is noticeable immediately.

Armour Athletics has 5,400 square feet of green, padded turf; 14-feet-high permanent shell nets; four batting-cage lanes; five pitching machines; and two Portolite pitcher’s mounds. It exudes class, and that is intentional.

Brett Armour, 40, played baseball at Fruita Monument High School and Mesa State, and he said providing a facility like Armour Athletics in Grand Junction has been his dream. Now, it’s a reality, and he expects customers will be impressed.

“I want you to walk in these doors and feel like you have teleported to a big city, really, a Las Vegas, a San Diego, a Scottsdale,” Brett said. “We don’t see this kind of stuff around here, haven’t historically, and I want people to know that it’s possible, and that we are here to do it right and do it well.”

Armour Athletics is located at 2892 North Ave., Unit A, next to First National Pawn and two doors down from Big O Tires.

Rachel said it took almost two years to find a suitable building, because they had some precise needs, such as ceiling height and a clear-span structure.

“I feel like I’ve got a good idea of what the vision is or was,” Brett said, “and it started with the building, the right building with the right ceilings and pitch lines and clear span, and then it goes from there. Then, it’s you fit the building with as much usable space as you can.

Armour Athletics co-owner Brett Armour stands in the upper-deck area of his new batting-cage facility, where people can watch everything that’s happening on the turf below. To the right of the upper deck is a photo of baseball players emerging from an Iowa cornfield in the 1989 movie “Field of Dreams.” The movie provided the famous line, “If you build it, he will come,” which Armour, like many people, modifies to say “they will come.” He hopes it applies to his new business. Armour chose the “Field of Dreams” photo because the movie is one of his favorites. “I remember watching it with my dad (Dave Armour); it was his favorite movie,” Brett said. It was a staple in Armour’s home as a child and now as an adult, as Brett and his wife, Rachel, have two sons, Ben and Rylan, who play baseball. Photo by Tim Harty.

“And I wanted it to be versatile as well. It’s very obviously baseball/softball-themed in here, but I’ve had interest from lacrosse teams, from seven-on-seven spring football guys, different speed and agility (groups), just to utilize the turf.

“So, I feel like I had a really clear vision, and then my detail-oriented wife helped me put it together. And I wasn’t willing to forgo on the vision either and settle and be ‘good enough.’”

Once they found the building, the Armours knew what they wanted to put inside. They knew it was going to cost money, and they didn’t mind sharing the amount.

“They should know the kind of investment we made,” Rachel said. “Nothing’s been cheap here. I mean, we did the most high-quality turf you can find. The nets are custom made.”

Brett added everything is professionally installed.

“The guys that came and installed it came from (working on) a 20,000-square-foot facility in like, Indiana,” he said. “They’re doing big jobs, indoor/outdoor turf. They’re doing turf fields. … This company is quality.”

Quality is a must as Brett said they’re trying to provide something with staying power.

“That’s what we want to create generationally for our kids, our community, something that’s lasting,” he said. “And the investment totally feels worth it.”

The Armours hope they’re just getting started, as Brett said he foresees a 20,000-square-foot facility in the future.

“We would like to outgrow this quickly, and I think we will,” he said.

In terms of users, local baseball and softball teams are natural clients, but the Armours want more than that. It is important, they said, that the public has access, which means they have to set limits on the amount of sports-team usage.

“We really are trying to balance public use,” Rachel said. “I know just in the murmurings, people are skeptical that that’ll happen. They’re very used to a facility opening and then being shut out from it for public use. And we would like to rewrite that for them. … We’re gonna truly dedicate space for public access.”

Brett added about the availability to the public: “We do want them to be included, feel like they have a place, that you don’t have to have a 10-year-old on a travel ball club team in order to access a facility of this quality.”

Brett said he’s optimistic they can strike the balance they seek, which will allow them to rent out the facility to groups for private events. Perhaps a group wants to host a birthday party and be able to play Wiffle ball. For that matter, maybe a group wants to organize a Wiffle ball league.

Helping with the event hosting is another nice feature of the facility: a lofted area where people can gather and watch whatever is happening on the turf.

“We’re gonna get creative with filling the space,” Brett said. “Even when the summer rolls around, we’re gonna keep it cool in here. So if it is a billion degrees, they might still wanna come inside and hit.”

Armour Athletics co-owner Brett Armour stands next to a Hack Attack pitching machine, one of five pitching machines at the batting-cage facility. Photo by Tim Harty.

MORE ABOUT ARMOUR ATHLETICS

CONTACT INFORMATION

To find out more about Armour Athletics, such as hours of operation, the cost of memberships or facility rentals, go online to armourathletics.com.

For additional information, call 970-314-2565 or email info@armourathletics.com.

THE EQUIPMENT

Armour Athletics has five pitching machines: two from Hack Attack for baseball only; two from JUGS that pitch baseballs and softballs; and one from JUGS for softball only.

The facility has two Portolite mounds for pitchers to throw from, including to live batters.

And there are four L-screens to protect whoever is operating the pitching machines or throwing batting practice.

DETERMINED OPPORTUNIST

Making Armour Athletics happen required patience and determination, which are traits Brett Armour has in abundance.

He made that clear as a baseball player who was a late-bloomer. Armour said he spent most of his time on the bench at Fruita Monument High School, but he became a starting infielder and occasional pitcher as a senior.

And a perfect-timing moment during a baseball camp before his senior season helped him advance to junior college baseball.

“It was the last day of camp, and we were scrimmaging, and they were running out of arms to pitch. They asked if anyone wanted to throw, and I said, ‘I’ll throw a little.’”

Armour didn’t think he did anything special with that opportunity, but it meant something to someone at Phoenix College, where he spent two years as a pitcher, then headed to Division I Oral Roberts University.

“I warmed up one time and never once saw the field,” Armour wrote on armourathletics.com. “That year at ORU made me, though. I learned to pitch there, transferred to Mesa State College, and went on to have the most successful seasons of my career.”

Armour pitched two years at Mesa State (now Colorado Mesa University). He had a good junior season, appearing in 23 games, primarily as the Mavericks closer, and he notched six saves.

Then, he broke out as a senior and earned All-America honors after posting a 14-3 record while appearing in 17 games, all as a starter. He tied the school record for wins in a season and tied for second most wins ever in a season in the Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference.

In 2009 he was one of the 12 players named to the RMAC Baseball Centennial All-Time Team, and he was inducted into Colorado Mesa’s Hall of Honor in 2018.

NO NEED TO GO PRO

Armour was signed by the Tampa Bay Rays following that great senior season. He went to extended spring training, but after he was told he would be joining the Hudson Valley Renegades in Poughkeepsie, NY, he decided against playing minor-league baseball.

“I quickly determined this was not my style of baseball I wanted to pursue,” he said.

Armour said he was young and didn’t understand he needed to have the mindset that baseball is a job, not just a passion. Had he known, he said, “I probably could have made a run at it, but truly God was telling me this isn’t the place for me. And so I hung it up and came back home.”

WHIRLWIND ROMANCE

A big part of coming home was to be with his fiancee, now wife, Rachel.

They were two years apart at Fruita Monument, but they never actually met until August 2006 at Mesa State, and Brett proposed in January 2007 before the start of his senior season.

“Five months later – I know!” Rachel said. “Brett’s always been a risk-taker. He knows what he wants and he gets after it.”

She added, “Oh man, I have loved Brett Armour since the moment we met.”

FATHERHOOD CHANGES THINGS

The Armours have two sons: Ben, who is 13 years old, and Rylan, who is 11.

Brett coaches them as part of the Westslope Mustangs Foundation youth baseball teams, which is something he never anticipated in his younger days. Many of his college teammates spoke of wanting to coach, but Brett wasn’t feeling it.

“That never once crossed my mind,” he said. “Then God gave me two little boys that love, love baseball, and I’m so lucky and blessed in that way.”

THEY QUALIFIED

Starting a business comes with risk, but that didn’t deter the Armours.

“We say that God does not call the qualified, he qualifies the called,” Rachel said. “And we have felt called to this work for a very long time, and He has absolutely made a way for us, made things possible that we know would not have otherwise been possible on our own merits.”

NOT ENOUGH ON HIS PLATE

Brett is an outside sales loan officer for Major Mortgage in Grand Junction, and he said he’s thankful his job there is flexible enough to allow him to start Armour Athletics.

As if that wasn’t enough to keep him busy, he also is executive director and president of the board of the Westslope Mustangs Foundation, a 501(c)3 nonprofit that fields competitive youth baseball and softball teams.

Brett acknowledged Armour Athletics will benefit the Mustangs, which he wants to grow.

“I couldn’t seek out enough church cafeterias or what have you for us to work out in in the winters as we grow the number of teams,” he said. “Because again, that’s the ultimate goal: Grow the nonprofit, give kids lots of good opportunities to be well-coached, grow in their love and passion for the sport, learn life lessons along the way. But they need space to do it.”