There is a new voice at Parx Racing. Jessica Paquette has the distinction of being the country’s first and only full time, year-round, female announcer at a major track.
“We are thrilled to welcome Jessica to the Parx family.” said Joe Wilson, Chief Operating Officer for Parx Racing, Bensalem, PA. “The high regard with which she is held in our industry along with a tremendous work ethic makes her the perfect person to usher in this new era for Parx.”
Paquette started at Parx in November, but she has 20 years’ experience in racing, including race broadcasting as a paddock analyst and in public relations. She has been a racing analyst at Colonial Downs and Sam Houston racetracks and most recently worked as the Director of Communications for the Thoroughbred Retirement Foundation. Prior to that she was the Vice President of Marketing at Suffolk Downs in Boston.
Her first experience as a race announcer came in 2014 at Suffolk Downs when she filled in for the regular announcer who was stuck in traffic.
“It was a thrill. It was one of the great moments of my times at Suffolk Downs,” Paquette said. “I thought it was a one-off and never really thought of it again until the opportunity presented itself to fill in for a weekend as a Quarter Horse race announcer at Sam Houston Race Park in Texas.”
That experience turned out to be the start of something much bigger.
“I did it and it was really fun, and I did it again the following year. The second weekend I started to think wow, if I got the chance to really do this, I would be able to,” she said. “I kind of put it out into the universe that this was a thing I was open to doing. Lo and behold the position at Parx opened up. I had done some work for them in a broadcasting capacity as a handicapper on their big days. They asked if I would be interested, I said ‘why not’.”
Race announcer can be a stressful position. Because you cannot predict what will happen, Paquette tries to prepare as much as she can in advance.
“I color my notes (with the silk colors) the night before. When the horses are in the paddock or warming up I color in any additional visual cues like blinkers or shadow role or a funny color bridle. Anything to help me out if they are in between horses and I can’t see anything,” Paquette said. “The memorization was really hard at first. Your brain is a muscle like anything else and the more you do it the easier that particular skill will get, and that has been the case.”
Some races can be harder to call when all the horses are similar colors or the weather is making it hard to see across the track. Paquette uses binoculars and there are monitors in case she needs a backup view in fog or heavy rain.
“The first really rainy day was hard for me,” she said. “As they are coming around that turn, a bunch of bay horses in black silks all covered in mud all start to look the same. You can get yourself into a little bit of trouble when you start second guessing yourself.”
It has taken time for Paquette to settle into the job. “I did not come into the booth on the first day good or even decent. It was certainly a really steep learning curve going from Quarter Horses, which run 250 yards (each race) to Thoroughbreds, which run a little bit longer. You’re telling more of a story with Thoroughbreds, and that took a little while for me to get my pacing and cadence and start to put all the pieces together.”
One of the hardest parts of the announcer’s job is judging the lengths between horses as the leaders go out in front of the pack. “That’s a tricky nuance thing that I’m really trying to push and get better at,” Paquette said.
Now that she is working as an announcer, Paquette has noticed that she watches and listens to races differently. “I am much less likely to be critical of an announcer making a mistake. I know first-hand how easy it is. I’ve made every possible mistake at this point,” she said.
Paquette has found that she prefers to call distance races where she can slow her thinking and be able to tell a bit of a story. “I love it all so much being able to tell the stories of the horses and these people. It’s a real honor.”
As time has gone by Paquette has become familiar with some of the horses that she has been seeing racing on a regular basis.
“I actually recognize the horses more than I recognize the people,” Paquette said. “Even the plain bay wrappers, they all look like individuals to me. There are certain ones whose running style is different. Some run with their head lower and some are a little goofier. That stuff becomes very familiar as well.”
At Parx there are a number of horses that run every ten days or two weeks, so they become familiar to the announcer. “At Parx you get so many of these really neat old war horses that really know the job,” Paquette said.
In addition to calling the races, Paquette talks between races too. “I talk all day. I’ve been a paddock analyst for so long it’s natural for me to pop on for a couple of minutes between races to give my handicapping,” she said.
So far, Paquette has not been at the mike during an on-course accident. “Inevitably those things will happen. Unfortunately, that’s part of the game. It never happens that it doesn’t upset me. If it ever stops upsetting you, you need a different line of work,” she said. “I think we owe it to the animals and the people involved to give it the somberness that it requires. I’m hoping when those incidents happen I can let people know what happened then change my tone and finish the race in an appropriate manner.”
Paquette did not grow up with horses but found that the racetrack was a place to see horses up close.
“As a kid I would take lessons once a week, but I could never pursue it the way I wanted to,” Paquette said. She was fortunate to be a part of a program called “Kids to the Cup” that gave young people a way to get into the sport of horse racing. “It was through that organization that I made some connections that got me my first job in racing as an intern at the Rockingham Park publicity office and then in the publicity office at Suffolk Downs.”
Now 38, Paquette started riding more seriously when she was in her 20s and took her first horse off the track. “They’ve given me everything in my life, the least I can do is give back to them,” she said. “Horses are the very fiber of my being.”
Paquette prefers hunters and does a bit with jumpers. She is also a marathon runner. She is planning to run the Boston Marathon this spring and ran the Chicago Marathon last fall, just one year after a 2021 back injury suffered in a riding accident.
Paquette lives in Massachusetts with her horses and dogs, driving down to Parx every Sunday night and home each Wednesday night after three days of announcing. She is still doing feature stories as well. “Anything that gets me in the barn with the horses,” she said. “My favorite part of it is getting to be a part of the day-to-day racing action. I love the day-to-day flow of a racetrack. Every day there’s a chance for something new. I don’t take for granted how special it is that I get the opportunity to do this and be at the racetrack every day.”