BURNERS STORY
Finding Belief
Ben Higson
A young paddler discovered confidence through challenge and persistence.
Belief isn't something you're given.
It's something you build through what you experience.
Where it started
Ben Higson’s freestyle journey began on the Thames Weirs. He joined Burners in 2018 as a young paddler with a big grin, plenty of curiosity and a huge appetite for learning.
By 14, he had made the GB Freestyle Team and joined his first international Burners camp, travelling and paddling across Germany, Austria, France and Spain.
But some of the things that mattered most weren’t results or new tricks.
For Ben, the friendships and sense of belonging became a huge part of the experience.
“Getting the chance to make lots of new friends who would later become long-term friends I still speak to now.”
Building belief
Ben’s progress wasn’t a sudden breakthrough.
Across 2020, 2021 and 2022, we worked together towards the World Championships in Nottingham. Skills developed. Expectations changed. And gradually, so did Ben’s belief in what might be possible.
At the 2022 World Championships, he won silver in Junior Men. All three paddlers on that podium had come through Burners.
The medal mattered. But so did everything that had happened before it.
The sessions. The trips. The friendships. The difficult days. The repeated attempts. And the gradual accumulation of experiences that allowed a young paddler to start seeing himself differently.
What came next
Ben eventually moved from junior into senior competition, while also beginning to give something back.
He started coaching at Burners weekends, helping younger paddlers through some of the same experiences that had shaped him.
His own ambitions continued to grow too.
As Ben puts it:
“Now it’s about making the impossible possible.”