5 Star Featured Athlete: Jessica Routier

Jessica Routier - Jackie Jensen Photography

Written by: Ruth Nicolaus

The Routier family is a 5 Star Equine family through and through.
Riley and Jessica Routier and their five children: son Braden and daughters Payton, twins Rayna and Rose, and Charlie, use and love 5 Star products.
Every horse on the Routier ranch, located in the far northwest corner of South Dakota, near Buffalo, wears a 5 Star pad. They love them. “I still have the very first 5 Star pad I owned,” Jessica said, “and they’re still just as good as the day we got them. They don’t wear out, and they fit a horse good.”
She uses the one-inch pad on her barrel horses. The ranch horses wear the rancher pad, and the ponies wear the seven-eighth inch pad because they’re “a little bit round.”
Once or twice a year, it’s saddle pad cleaning time for the Routiers. The family uses the cleaning spray and sponges that are sold alongside the pads, then hose them off, “and they’re good to go for another six months.”
Jessica also uses the mohair cinches and loves the variety of colors they come in.
The Routiers are partial to the boots, too. Fiery Miss West, “Missy”, her primary barrel horse, doesn’t wear boots at all but the other horses do. “I like how they fit. I think they give the horses a lot of support.”
Five Star products are easily customizable with different colors and patterns, but that has caused a bit of competition amongst the two older Routier kids. The family has three sets of boots: blue, purple and red, but Braden and Payton always want the blue set. “We have a big fight going on the barn right now,” Jessica said. “Everybody thinks the blue boots are the best.”
Jessica has qualified for the Wrangler National Finals Rodeo four times, each time on Missy. She finished the 2018 season as reserve world champion and has won the Badlands Circuit Finals year-end title four times (2017, 19-21).
Now the next generation of Routiers is rodeoing.
Son Braden, a sophomore in high school, competes in the tie-down roping, team roping and steer wrestling in both high school rodeo and Little Britches.
Payton, who is an eighth grader, trick rides and breakaway ropes, although the trick riding might go on the back burner for a while, her mother said. “I think she was getting lonely spending weekends with her mom (trick riding at rodeos) when her friends were at other rodeos, roping and running barrels.”
The three little girls are always in the mix. Rayna and Rose are six years old, and Charlie is five. They like to run around the barrels, do poles and they’ve dabbled in the trick roping. They track calves out of the roping box and rope the calf sled behind the four wheeler.
Rodeo is special to Jessica.
“I don’t even know what my life would be like without rodeo, and without having found that one once-in-a-lifetime horse (Missy). It’s built my whole life and who I am. I have an amazing rodeo horse and I’ll rodeo on her as long as she’s healthy and willing.”
She’s helping her kids rodeo, too.
“My goal is to find that once-in-a-lifetime horse for my kids, the horse that shapes their lives.”
She loves the life she and Riley have built, with their family.
“I’m just so thankful to have raised them in a rodeo community and on a ranch. I don’t think there’s a better place to raise kids.”

5 Star Featured Athlete: Jessica Routier

Written by: Ruth Nicolaus

Posted on: April 21, 2022

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