BERWICK, Pa. — Machaella Knelly practices with her horse Wally in North Centre Township. Knelly and Walley competed at the 2024 Pennsylvania state 4-H Dressage Championship show at the Centre County Grange fairgrounds last month and won Dressage High Point Champion. Knelly describes dressage as ballet on a horse.
"Manipulating the horse to move correctly, use their body correctly, strengthen every aspect of them is a very demanding job of both the horse and the rider, getting both the horse and rider to move in unison correctly, strong, being supple and soft, and doing very high level of movements while making it look like it's effortless," said Machaella Knelly, Berwick.
Knelly has been dressage riding on and off since she was ten years old. She's been with her horse Wally for four years and they've been dressage riding for three and a half years. At the championship show Knelly and Wally rode the United States Dressage Federation tests two and three. During the test, each movement is judged separately and scored on a scale from one to ten--a normal score would be a five or six.
"From there you can move up to a 10, but it's mostly just round circles in the right placements trotting and making your horse you know stay round and lift their back and engage their whole body, their walk making sure that you're not boring the judge—they're active," said Knelly.
Knelly and Wally rode against 150 other riders at the competition. Knelly says she was nervous while waiting for her score and knew that she and Wally had a chance at winning.
"And when they finally announced it there was just an eruption of happiness throughout the entire show because he's come to have quite a large following and a lot of supporters and a lot of good friends that were cheering him on and—yes I know—and very excited to see him finally achieve a goal of mine that we've worked very hard to reach."
Knelly and Wally are heading back to the Centre Grange County fairgrounds to compete at the District Five 4-H Horse Show.