Lark Heckman and Franzissimo Overall Champions of 2025 Florida Youth Dressage Championships

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2025 CDI Ocala

-- WEC press release, edited by Eurodressage

The 2025 Florida Youth Dressage Championships honored the overall and division champions at World Equestrian Center – Ocala (WEC) on Sunday, March 9, during the CDI Ocala. Sixteen-year-old Lark Heckman of Ocala, FL, rode her horse Franzissimo to the overall championship in her first international competition.

What Are the Florida Youth Dressage Championships?

The Florida Youth Dressage Championships are an initiative of Kimberly van Kampen through her projects Discover Dressage and Hampton Green Farms. She founded the project in 2013 together with Lendon Gray of Dressage4Kids. Initially held in Wellington, Florida, the Championships were part of a CDI during the Global Dressage Festival and included four divisions (pony, junior, young rider; Under 25).

The Florida Youth Dressage Championships provide a fun, competitive, and educational atmosphere for young dressage riders to advance in the sport, while boosting camaraderie and sportsmanship as well as new friendships and experiences. Special awards are given to the overall winner in the CDI youth classes.

In 2022 Van Kampen relocated her entire set-up from Wellington to Ocala and the FYDC moved with her. The 2022 edition ended up getting cancelled, but the celebrated project returned on the calendar in 2023 albeit at national level. In 2024 it continued as a national venture and this year it was back to the international format.

Alumni of the Florida Youth Dressage Championships are Canadian Olympian Camille Carier Bergeron as well as Grand Prix riders Juan Matute Guimon, Pablo Gomez Molina, Hope Cooper, Tanya Strasser, Felicitas Hendricks, amongst others.

Heckman, the 2025 FYDC Overall Champion

The 16-year old Lark Heckman became the overall champion. In their first test, the Junior Team competition, they scored 63.818%. They added a score of 67.529% in the Junior Individual competition, and with a third score of 67.295% in the Junior Freestyle, won the championship. With the scoring used for the junior division and above, her team and individual scores counted for 40% and her freestyle score counted for 20%, which gave her an average score of 65.959% for the overall title.

Heckman found Franzissimo, a 10-year-old Oldenburg gelding by Franziskus x Belissimo M bred by the late Ewald Groteluschen, a year ago when she went to Wellington, FL, looking for an equitation horse. Heckman only competed in the hunter/jumper discipline, so she was unfamiliar with dressage. But having tried “Mo” and seen him in his element of dressage, she decided to keep him as a dressage horse and began training with Nicky Buckingham.

Franzissimo was a licensed stallion in Germany, getting his breeding pass at the DSP Licensing in 2017. He did his 14-day suitability test and sport test in 2019 and his second sport test in 2020. He competed in Germany first under Shereen Satzer and then under Lune Karolin Müller until December 2021.

He was gelded and sold to the U.S. Mo had not shown in the U.S. until Heckman began competing him in April 2024 at Training Level Test 1. They ended up qualifying for the US Dressage Finals, where they won the Training Level Championship in November. They then completed Second and Third Level tests, and Heckman received her U.S. Dressage Federation Bronze Medal.

Jump to Junior Level

Heckman is the 2025 FYDC Overall Champion

Two weeks ago, Heckman and Mo did their first Junior Level test at the national level, including their first freestyle, where they had their music from this week’s FEI freestyle – designed by EquiDance and set to music by the Swedish rock band Ghost – but a completely different floorplan.

“The music suits his personality,” said Heckman. “When we play the music, he fires up and gets into it and loves doing it. He does get excited sometimes, which is why we had the mistake in today’s freestyle and cantered during the trot half-pass.”

While Heckman showed in the hunters this past summer with her trainer Kim Burnett, Mo is the only horse she currently owns. She plans to continue her dressage career and has set goals of qualifying for the North American Youth Championships and the Festival of Champions.

“Dressage has been fun and different,” she said. “Mo did Prix St. Georges, so he taught me how to do everything. I like that dressage is more technical. I always rode equitation because of that, and I enjoyed flat work, so now it’s a mix of both. My other goal is to take him through Young Rider Grand Prix. He isn’t trained that far, but we are beginning to introduce it at home.”

This was Heckman’s first experience at the Florida Youth Dressage Championships, and she said her overall win was exciting and unexpected. “I’ll definitely be back next year for it,” she confirmed. “It’s really nice that Discover Dressage and Hampton Green Farm put it on for us. Their support and dedication to youth dressage is great.”

Kids in Action

With the concentration of riders in Ocala being smaller than in Wellington at this point in time, the FYDC had to start from scratch when it moved to Ocala in 2022 promoting the event as a key competition in the path of a youth riders up the levels. There were only three competitors in the FYDC this year. The contested divisions were the children, junior and young riders age category.

Gianna Foley (USA) rode Happy Khan, her own KWPN gelding by Zhengis Khan x Jazz, to the Children’s division championship in their second FEI competition together. The pair, who are the same age at 13 years old, scored 69.465% in the Children’s Preliminary Competition – B test, 68.975% in the Children’s Team competition test, and a personal best of 68.496% in the Children’s Individual competition test. The Children’s division counts the average of technical score of the three days’ competition, giving Foley an overall score of 64.700%.

The Young Rider division championship went to 18-year-old Cheyenne Duncan (USA) and Skikkild’s De’Nozzo, her own 11-year-old Danish Warmblood gelding (De L’Or x De Noir). In their first FEI Young Rider show together, they scored personal bests of 65.971% in the Young Riders Team competition test and 65.383% in the Young Riders Individual competition test. Since Duncan did not compete in the Young Rider Freestyle class, she was ineligible for the overall championship.