By Alice Collins for Jump Media/USDF with photos from Diana Hadsall Photography
September 17, 2025 – Lexington, KY – The first weekend of the 2025 Regional Championships season, held across nine United States Dressage Federation (USDF) regions, opened with the Great American Insurance Group/USDF Region 2 Dressage Championships at the Waterloo Hunt Club in Grass Lake, MI, September 10-14. This year’s US Dressage Finals presented by Adequan® will be held October 30-November 2 at the World Equestrian Center in Wilmington, OH — a new home for the prestigious show.
The first Regional Championships of the season brought rich pickings for Jennifer Roth despite the Pataskala, OH-based rider feeling very unwell during the show. She recorded a trio of championship titles, two of them on her partner James Gerhart’s 12-year-old 17.1hh Hanoverian gelding, Royal Davinci, a horse with a checkered medical past. The duo headed up both First Level classes, with a high score of 78.583% in the freestyle — the top score across all the championship classes. She also finished reserve champion in the freestyle riding Sheena Helm’s nine-year-old Rotspon mare Relish The Moment to 76.458%.
Roth rode a staggering 19 tests over the four-day show from First Level through grand prix, resulting in three Regionals wins and eight more top three finishes, as well as three further non-championship class victories. Between Roth and her clients, they had 15 horses at the show.
Roth is a USEF ‘R’ dressage judge and a coach at Otterbein University in Westerville, OH. Before Regionals, she picked up “the back-to-school college student plague.” She lost her voice, but fortunately, trainer Sharon Ridge, who travels to shows with Roth’s team, was on hand to help with the multitude of clients and tests.
Roth and Gerhart’s story with their double champion Royal Davinci (by Royal Prince) goes back a long way. “‘Vincent’ is a half-sibling to an FEI horse I owned and loved,” explained Roth, who has regular help from trainer James Koford. “When Davinci was four, we wanted to buy him, but he epically failed the pre-purchase exam on his x-rays, and we passed on him. He went to someone else who trained him, and when she tried to sell him, my veterinarian did the pre-purchase, which he failed again. His owner was going to put him down as he had no value to her, so my veterinarian saved him and reached out to us.
“I’m all about the ‘scratch and dent’ horses; all my top horses always have something wrong,” she continued. “I’m all for giving the horse with the suspensory injury or the terrible x-rays a chance, so we took him in. He has spent almost two years — about half his time with us — as a field ornament. But with a great team around him, he’s holding together really well. He even decided to pull off one of his very expensive front shoes on the way to his First Level freestyle championship test, but we still managed a plus-80% score from judge Kristi Wysocki. He’s a wonderful horse, and yes, he’s a little old for First Level, but we’re just happy that we can keep ‘Humpty Dumpty’ together. He has a home for life with us.”
Relish The Moment, who is just 15.2hh, delivered a blue ribbon in the Second Level freestyle championship with 74%, as well as two reserve titles for Roth.
“I look a little silly as I’m almost 5’10”, but ‘Fiona’ is a lovely little horse owned by a great client,” continued Roth, who picked up four Finals tickets on the mare. “When you lead her around, it’s easy not to think much of her, but when you sit on her and put her together, she’s game for anything. When you ask questions of her, she never gives you the wrong answers. Because things are easy, training her is a real pleasure, and I’m looking forward to putting the flying changes onto that one.”
Not to be outdone, Adult Amateur Gerhart also claimed his Finals ticket riding Roth’s 17-year-old horse Gaijin — another to have overcome a suspensory injury — onto the podium twice at Third Level.
“Between us all, we’ve qualified seven or eight horses for Finals,” added Roth, who drove 3.5 hours to the Regionals and has already made her entries for Finals. “I want to give a special shoutout to my client Ann Melick, who won the First Level Adult Amateur championship on Benetto with over 73% in a class with 36 starters. The day before, they came dead last with 55% but she put in the time and patience to fix the malfunctions and went from zero to hero.”
Roth had a hand in Adult Amateur Kelsey Lawrence’s duo of championship wins on Hashtag TOP as she owned the 13-year-old Canadian-born son of Negro between the ages of five and nine before selling him to Kathy Rizzoni. Lawrence and Hashtag TOP won all three classes they contested — including two championships — all while she is pregnant. The pair were the unanimous winners with 69.7% in the Intermediate I freestyle from first draw and topped the straight class at the level with 67.132%.
“I’m 17 weeks pregnant with my first baby, so I didn’t know how I’d feel,” said the full-time dermatologist who finds time to ride after work by starting her shifts at 7 a.m., “but I feel better now than I did a few weeks ago. ‘Hudson’ was such a good boy. It was special to be able to do that.”
Rizzoni, who was also competing at the show, put together Lawrence’s demanding freestyle for her, which featured three-time changes on a curve and pirouettes directly out of the half-passes.
“I’ve kept in contact with them all since I bought Hudson in early 2023, and it was so nice for them to all see how well he is doing,” added Lawrence, who boards at Topline Dressage in Clarkston, MI, and trains with Judy Kelly. “He has a big heart, he tries, and he’s really attached to me — he’s always looking for me on the ground.
“Under saddle, he can be lazy, but once he gets going, he gets amped up. I’ve entered for Finals and I’m going to try and go for one last good show before the baby break, but I don’t know how big I’ll be by then, so I’ll have to see if my balance is off,” she concluded.
A Golden Weekend
It was a memorable weekend for youth rider Autumn Vavrick, who emerged from the Region 2 Championships with not only two winner’s sashes and qualification for Finals with One De La Fazenda (whose barn name is Owen), but also the scores needed for her USDF Gold Medal riding 18-year-old Dante, a De Niro gelding bred in Britain by Judith Davis of Hawtins Stud.
“I’m still processing it all, and it hasn’t sunk in yet,” admitted 16-year-old Vavrick. “I’ve dreamed about the Gold Medal for a while, but it came way quicker than I expected.”
Her championship double was achieved on her family and Eleonora Frey’s six-year-old gelding. They found the son of Valverde in the Netherlands early in 2025, and he arrived in his new home in February. The budding partnership of Vavrick and One De La Fazenda was unbeaten across three dressage tests, all with scores over 74% at First and Second Level at the Region 2 Championships, and they also topped the USDF Dressage Seat Medal Semi Finals with 87%.
Vavrick began riding when she was seven and started her competitive career as an eventer until a chance encounter with her current coach, Laurie Moore, when she was still riding her eventing Thoroughbred, Hollis. With Moore’s help, she burst onto the dressage scene.
“My expectations this weekend were for clean tests and to have Owen really focused on me,” said Vavrick, who is part of a hybrid school program, which consists of two days a week in person and the rest online. “Laurie told me to smile and keep him round and loose in the tests. There were lots of high fives when I walked out of my tests. She had 19 other students at the show, so she was very busy, but she’s a superhero with how she made everything happen.”
Vavrick also scooped two reserve champion titles, at Third and Fourth Level, riding Susanne Forsyth’s 12-year-old 13.2hh New Forest gelding, Remington. This year will mark her second time competing at the US Dressage Finals.
“I’ve had a lot of fun bringing Owen along, and I’d love to ride young horses or be a rider for a stable with young horses in the future,” she added. “I love to ride and hope to make it onto a senior team to represent the USA one day.”
Heather McCarthy secured a championship double, picking up both Open Third Level classes on Material Girl, Kimberly Cederlund’s seven-year-old German-bred Morricone x Lauries Crusador mare. McCarthy’s top score of 73.837% was achieved in the freestyle, while in the straight class, their score of 70.438% set them atop the pack of 17 starters.
The 2025 US Dressage Finals presented by Adequan® takes place October 30-November 2 at the World Equestrian Center in Wilmington, OH. It is a national, head-to-head competition that showcases competitors in Adult Amateur, Open, and Junior/Young Rider divisions. Classes run from Training Level through Grand Prix, plus freestyle to music divisions, with Junior/YR sections at Training Level through Intermediate I. There is more than $125,000 in prize money on offer over the four days. Learn more here.
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