story by Siri Stevens
Jade Rindlisbacher won the Utah High School Rookie of the Year as well as the pole bending championship. She ended her first year in the high school association by placing 5th in the nation in the pole bending. She competes in team roping, breakaway, barrels, and goat tying and her favorite is team roping. “I get to rope with my dad and brothers.” Dad, Jason, heels for her as so do her brothers, Wyatt (13) and Rylan (8). Her mom, Natalie, hauls her in the winter when they can’t ride in the arena.
Jade strives to set the example for her little brothers. “I try to be the best I can to show them how to act and be a good person.” The family lives in Spanish Fork, Utah, on the family mink ranch. “We work every day on the ranch – feeding, cleaning, and filling water,” said Jade, who started competing in rodeo at the age of nine. “I love all the life lessons I get to learn through rodeo – and getting closer with my friends and family – and my horses.” She rides horses that the family trains. “They were my dad’s rope horses except for my barrel horse.” She has four horses in her herd.
She has won the pole bending in the state of Utah every year since sixth grade. In her last year in the junior high finals, she came back high call at Nationals in the pole bending and hit a pole. She is working on being more consistent and putting in more hours. “When it gets hard, I just keep going,” said the sophomore. She is excited to get back to school.
She will be sophomore and is excited to get back. “I really like school – I like learning and hanging out with my friends.” Her extra efforts have paid off for school as well; she has maintained a 4.0 for the past two years. Her favorite subjects are math and English. “There’s only one answer in math and I like working out the problems. And I love to read.”
When she grows up, she wants to go into dentistry or a librarian, but she is still deciding.
She definitely wants to keep training horses. “But, I did train my own barrel horse and I am also starting to train more barrel horses.” She spends all day every day at practice. “In the summer, I get up and ride colts. I exercise horses and help out on the ranch and at night we rope.”
Jason is proud of his daughter. “When she was 8, she said she wanted to start riding. She started with my team roping horses and got them on the patterns,” he said. “These horses had never seen a barrel or a pole before she got on them. She’s won more than 20 saddles and numerous titles.”
Winning is when hours of practice meet with a moment of opportunity.
Jade Rindlisbacher – Western Edge Photography
