by Neil Milbert

For the second time in two years, the Illinois-bred Horse of the Year is a trotter.

The 2023 honoree is Goomster, a 4-year-old gelded son of the deceased sire Cassis out of the Muscle Hill mare Sheeza Muscle. He was bred by Vernon Miller, is owned by Dennis Gardner of West Salem, IL, and is trained by Desirae Seekman. His driver has been Desirae’s husband, Travis.

Goomster and the other 2023 Illinois-bred champions will be honored at a banquet on Saturday night (March 2) at the State Fairgrounds in Springfield.

In addition to being selected Horse of the Year, Goomster will be recognized as the champion 3-year-old male trotter after reigning as the 2022 champion 2-year-old trotter.

Then, Gardner also was his trainer and he was driven by Kyle Wilfong.

“I bought him from this Amish guy, Vernon Miller, who raised the colt when he was a yearling early in the summer and that fall, we started breaking him,” Gardner said. “He was kind of ornery to break so I gelded him. I kind of wish I hadn’t now but, on the other hand, I don’t know if he’d have been as good a horse.

“He’s my horse of a lifetime. I’m 56 and I’ll be 112 years old if I get another one like him.”

Gardner trained Goomster until the fall of his 2-year-old campaign.

“I had a lot of stuff going on with my other young horses, and Kyle had made Indiana his base,” he said, explaining why he gave the gelding and some other racehorses to the Seekmans. “I told Travis: ‘I want Des to train him and you to drive him for a few months and we’ll see how that works.’

“They have done a tremendous job. No way could I take him away from them. It has been great for all of us — now I concentrate on my colts — and another bonus is we’ve become good friends.”

After compiling a 12-race 2022 composite of five wins and four places and earning $120,125, Goomster outdid himself last year by winning 16 of his 21 starts and finishing second four times in the process of earning $158,084. He had a career best mark of 1:52.4 at Springfield.

The Illinois-bred followed up his victory in the $93,000 Erwin Dygert Memorial on Hawthorne Race Course’s Night of Champions on Oct. 14 by going to Hoosier Park and annexing a pair of $20,000 open races.

“He has been a dream come true,” Travis said. “He can leave the gate and do a quarter in :27 if you want or you can do a quarter in :31. On a super cold night [in his last start on Dec. 11 at Hoosier] he won by about 6 ½ lengths and I buggy drove him around the track.”

According to Desirae, who has been married to Travis for 12 years and has been training for about 11 years, Goomster, also is a push-button horse to train.

Both she and Travis have parents with standardbred racing resumes — Joe and Tina Seekman and Rick and Theresa Ledford. The families have owned horses and Joe and Rick were successful trainers.

Currently, Desirae and Travis are based at a small farm his parents own in Gaston, IN, about 20 miles north of Hoosier Park. They have two daughters, Raegyn and Graceyn.

Their plans are for Goomster to qualify at Hoosier in mid-March in preparation for his 4-year-old season. They will race there and probably at Oak Grove before returning to Illinois so he can participate in this summer’s non-betting races at Springfield, partially funded by the Hawthorne purse account, to prepare for the resumption of weekly pari-mutuel harness racing in Illinois at the dual-purpose Chicagoland track on Oct. 12.

“We’ll race him every other week in the hot part of the summer and keep him as fresh as possible,” Travis said. “I’m afraid the big night [the Night of Champions] will be pushed into December.”

Gardner is looking forward to the summer stint at Springfield.

“I love that track,” Goomster’s owner said. “My family has been involved there since the early 1950s. My great grandpa, Elmer Knackmuhs, won the very first stakes race at the Illinois State Fair. He bought the mare and her first foal won the race.

“My family always had trotters. My uncle, George, owned half of Gumcorner Lad [a member of the Illinois Harness Horsemen’s Association Hall of Fame].”

Gardner has eight 2-year-olds and a pair of 3-year-olds he is training at the track on his 865-acre farm — some of which “is just woods” — while Goomster and his other 4-year-old in training, Take Me To Dennyland, are with the Seekmans.

According to Gardner, Goomster’s dam, Sheeza Muscle Girl, “never made it to the races but a friend told me she was a nice mare who trained pretty good. I would like to buy the mare but Vernon [Miller] won’t sell her.”

Looking ahead to the start of Goomster’s 2024 campaign at Hoosier, Gardner is a bit apprehensive because “he’ll have to race in the opens [against 4-year-olds and up] and that will be tough.”

His former driver, Wilfong, doesn’t think it will be a problem.

“Last fall Goomster showed he will be able to compete just about anywhere they take him,” Wilfong said. “Des and Travis are doing a great job.”

Travis and Desirae regard Wilfong and his [trainer] wife, Nicole, as fast friends.

“We go on family vacations together,” Travis said. “Off the track Kyle and I are best friends. At the track he has been very supportive of Des and I.”

Travis finished third in the 2023 Hawthorne trainer standings last year with 69 wins, 67 places and 63 shows in 437 races and $723,215 in earnings.

Meanwhile, with Goomster in the forefront, horses trained by Desirae made 32 starts at the meeting, recording 13 wins, six places and four shows while making bank deposits of $115,494.

In addition to her training duties, Desirae, works as a behavioral therapist and has a small business, Design by Des, specializing in creating custom gear for horse owners and trainers.

“On top of all that she’s a full-time mom,” Travis said. “She has a heck of a busy life.”

Before getting married and gravitating to training, Desirae made her mark as a softball player. Her Beecher High School team won an Illinois State championship and she was a second-baseman and catcher at Prairie State College, where she had an athletic scholarship and majored in criminal justice.

Daughter Raegyn is a budding athlete, participating in cheerleading and tumbling.

“Raegyn has a competition Saturday in Muncie [IN] and I’ll have to dart from there to Springfield for the [Illinois-bred champions] banquet,” said the mom in motion.

Finish Lines: Following her stellar 2022 Horse of the Year campaign as a 3-year-old filly trotter, Funky Wiggle failed to earn a championship when she moved up to the aged mare trotter division in 2023. The champion of her Illinois-bred age group for the eighth straight year was the now-retired Annas Lucky Star.

The other champion trotters who will be recognized at the Springfield banquet are: 2-year-old filly Whiskey Lou, 2-year-old male Lous Private Eye, 3-year-old filly Bell Boots, aged male On Higher Ground, broodmare Queen Jamie and sire Lous Legacy.

The champion pacers: 2-year-old filly Chickabell, 2-year-old male Gorgeous Big Guy, 3-year-old filly Fox Valley Leah, 3-year-old male Fox Valley Landen, aged mare Scorecard Dandy, aged male He’zzz A Wise Sky, broodmare Gimmeazzzmooch and sire Somestarsomewhere.