Victoria Ford and her paint Sully rode through the arena as one.

Sully seemed to know what Victoria wanted with only her slightest movement.

Precision like this doesn’t come without practice though.

Victoria has been riding horses since she was 5 years old.

“Ever since I was little, all I ever wanted was a horse,” Victoria said. “They finally got me one and I have been riding ever since.”

Saturday morning Victoria was competing against seven other youth in the senior category.

“Today I am doing the western pleasure events,” she said only moments before hopping atop her paint. “It is one of the slower events where riders are judged on how well they ride their horse and if the horse can do it.”

Lisa Baker, who helped coordinate the show, was pleased with the results of the show.

“We had a lot more entries than last year,” she said. “There were a lot of new people who had never shown before...

“We had a lot of kids graduate. But our senior classes were still bigger than they have ever been.”

Even with so many newcomers to the arena, the competition was still quite tough.

“I thought it was a tough competition,” Baker said.

Earlier that morning, contestants were not riding their horses but instead showing them.

Lane Rothlisberger has been riding and working with horses for more years than he can remember.

That work paid off Saturday as he walked away with the top prize — grand champion in the mare competition.

Lane says he doesn’t remember when he first started working with horses or how old he was when he first hopped into a saddle — “I was probably in diapers,” he said.

Those years have taught him what it takes to turn his horse into a show animal.

“You have to wash your horse and trim them up,” he said. “It is a lot of work to make sure they are in good shape and look well...

“You have to make sure their mane looks good and paint their hooves.”

Baker said the competition went on well into the evening hours, ending at about 10:30 p.m.