Testimony

It is interesting how life's pathway brings us into contact with so many individuals from day to day and that occasionally one of these individuals will have a major impact on some part of our life. It is even more amazing when the same individual has the same impact on the lives of many others.

Such is the case with Ben Lawry. Ben has managed to pack a lot of paddling experience and accomplishments into his short 37 years of age. More than most of us are able to do in a lifetime. However, most importantly he has never forgotten the need for bringing new blood into the sport no matter what the age of the paddler. As a result Ben will take advantage of any opportunity to promote the sport to others.

I live in the Southeastern region of Virginia where we are bordered by the Atlantic Ocean, the Chesapeake Bay, and hundreds of miles of creeks and rivers. I first met Ben when I attended an early Sunday morning paddling practice in the fall of 2000 with the Mid-Atlantic Paddlers Association (MAPA), our local paddling club. I was so new to the sport of paddling that I didn't realize the significance of being the only paddler with a plastic sea kayak and touring paddle. I was introduced and welcomed by all as they went about making their preparations. The put-in that day was a sand beach on the banks of the Chesapeake Bay. I had been informed that the practices start promptly at 7:30 am but still was not prepared for what that meant. As I sat in my kayak attaching the spray skirt on the beach I looked up to see the group of surf ski's and OC-1's already assembled out in the water. Just then I heard a voice saying, "hold on to your paddle and I will give you a shove". Before I realized it, I was gliding through the small waves, and as I started to paddle, a surf ski was pulling alongside. It was Ben assessing my current paddling prowess and informing me of the plan for the morning. I, of course, stopped paddling to listen. He said, "I'm going to keep paddling while we talk". I got the point and started paddling again. The plan for the group was to do a high tempo paddle around a man made island with an estimated paddling time of 90 minutes. Ben informed me that my goal should be to paddle until I reached the lighthouse further down the beach, and to turn around and paddle back to the starting point by the time they returned. Then he sped off to catch the rest of the group, which had already departed. As I watched him paddle away I noticed something different in his paddle stroke that I had not seen before, even though I did not know enough to determine what it was. I just remember the blades of his paddle looked like a paddle wheel with one going in the water almost as soon as the other came out.

I paddled at a speed that was hard for me to maintain back then, but I was determined to accomplish my plan. I actually got back in time to have my boat loaded as the group returned. This proved to be good because this group moved equally fast when loading boats, changing and going to breakfast as they did when paddling.

Everyone was very friendly and welcomed me at their group breakfast as well. Because of the positive experience I has that first day, I have now been paddling with this same group of individuals almost 4 years and count them all as friends. It took me a while to realize the significance of what Ben had done that morning. Without a second thought he had taken the time to get me off to a good start. He had informed me of their intended plan and when they would return, and he developed a plan for me that would produce a positive result on my first outing. Without him doing that I might have become discouraged because I couldn't keep up and not gone back. In the 3 years I was fortunate enough to paddle with Ben, I saw him do similar things with other newcomers and would-be racers.

Between 2000 and 2003 I witnessed many of his accomplishments but in gathering the material for this article I realized I had only witnessed and knew of but a portion of his paddling experiences.

Ben was born in 1967 in Chester England where in 1978 at the age of 11 a teacher (David Adams) got he and 6 other kids interested in paddling. At first they would borrow boats and later built their own. On weekends his teacher would load Ben and the others in a van and go paddle and race in rivers in Wales. According to Ben he got plenty of swimming practice in those outings as well.

A family move took Ben to a different school and away from the paddling group he started with, but he joined a paddling club in Exeter in the UK and began participating in flatwater racing. He was paddling a plastic canoe against fiberglass ones, but always managed a 2nd or 3rd place finish.

In high school paddling took a back seat to field hockey (a huge men's team sport in England), but it resurfaced in 1985 when Ben came to the US for the summer and joined the Atlanta Whitewater Club. Ben returned to England and made plans to return to the US the next year.

He returned the summer of 1986 a secured a position with the Nantahala Outdoor Center (NOC) as raft guide and Canoe and Kayak Instructor. The off season was when the racing picked up, and he would practice running gates on the Nantahala River during lunch breaks and train with US team members. He would also soak up whatever knowledge was available from Rodeo and white water gurus at the Ocoee whenever possible.

He went to Peru with a group in search of perfect white water, but got sick and returned to the US. While recovering he decided he wanted to do Wild Water Racing. After his first race he was hooked.

His thirst for knowledge of the sport was never ending. Ben would ask any paddler that would listen questions about the sport. He also attended training camps and eventually improved. As a result of his diligence, hard work, and the efforts of David Caborn (Kentucky Orthopedic and marathoner), Ben qualified as a member of the US Wild Water team for both 1997 and 1998. He competed in Europe both years and the World Championships in Garmish, Germany in 1998. Thanks to the generosity of the Federazione Italiana Canoa Kayak (FICK), Ben was able to train in Italy with a top Italian Wild Water racer, Carlo Mercati, and the Citta di Castillo Canoe Club.

In 1999 Ben relocated to Southeastern Virginia to manage a local paddling shop, and he began to paddle on all the flat water and surf in the area. Shortly after relocating to the area, he was out for a run one day and met Tim Jones, a MAPA member who noticed his Gauley River Race tee-shirt and invited him to come to a local practice. by the following year 2000 when I met him, Ben was winning all the local races. However, unless he had to rush off to work, I never saw him leave the racecourse until all the competitors were finished. After crossing the finish line he would turn around and paddle back up the course encouraging all competitors to paddle hard all the way to the finish. MAPA is focused on promoting competitive paddling and fitness and Ben was a major contributor to this effort both in MAPA and our area.

At MAPA we race kayaks, canoes, 6-and 1-man outriggers, and surf skis. Ben participated and excelled at all of them. Our winters allow paddling year round, and we have regularly scheduled practices on Wednesday at 4:30 pm and Sunday at 7:30 am rain or shine. Ben would develop a practice schedule and specific workout for each one of them. He even devised a way to keep newcomers with the group during sprint, interval, and time trail workouts. Rather than doing a series of sprints or intervals in one direction causing the slower people to have to catch-up just in time to start the next one without a rest, he would have us sprint in one direction and stop where we were when the time ended. We would then turn around at the location where we stopped, and the next sprint would be back to the starting point. At that point it was a dead even race to the starting line. When we did time trials he started the slower paddlers first with 2-minute intervals between each paddler. This allowed a better chance for the slower paddlers to be finished by the time the faster ones were done. There were times when he would tie one or more ropes around his hull to slow himself down. He got a good workout and we could keep him in sight. Other times he would arrive one or two hours before the scheduled workout and complete a workout before the workout. Ben was a good paddler, because he had talent yes, but also because he always made the time to work at it.

In time Ben ventured out to bigger races. In 2001 he won the Open Sea Kayak Class of the Rum Runner, a three day stage race that was held in the Florida Keys. In 2002 he paddled C-2 with Rusty McClain, another MAPA member, in the General Clinton, a 70 mile canoe marathon, and they won their class. that same summer Ben competed in the Blackburn a 20-mile ocean race off the coast of Massachusetts and won the surf ski class, and was second overall to Greg Barton. In 2003 he followed it up with a 1st overall and 1st in the Surf Ski class.

All the while he was competing Ben continued to promote paddling in the area by bringing in coaches for weekend training and video sessions. One weekend he had Chris Lepianka, a former Olympian and Olympic coach for a two0day session. Another time Ben, with Randy Drake's help, brought in Al Rudquist, a well-respected marathon paddler and coach for a weekend canoe training session. One thing Ben really believes in is learning to do things correctly so that your practice produces improvement in technique as well as fitness. Ben has taken coaching from more than 10 international coaches for forward stroke alone and has trained with national team members in slalom, rodeo, wild water, surf ski, and marathon kayak here in the US and throughout Europe. What's best is that he loves sharing that knowledge with others.

Ben went to the New York's Liberty Challenge with MAPA's OC-6 men's team in 2002 and was a member of the winning 2000 Captiva team. During practice sessions Ben would paddle besides the OC-6 on his ski assisting Rusty McLain and Randy Drake with the club's coaching. In time all the regulars attending practice sessions benefited from Ben's workout plans and all got better and faster.

In 2003 Ben combined his race skills with his sea kayak instruction skills and offered to paddle with and train local paddlers for a Chesapeake Bay crossing, which is a distance of 18 Nautical Miles. Ben and 3 others completed the crossing in 4 hours.

In January 2003 Ben accepted an invitation to go to South Africa to paddle and race the DUSI (www.dusi.org.za), a 3-day stage race down rapids, up to class 3 white water, in Olympic sprint boats (K-1 and K-2). The race includes portages over ridges and crosses a lake. There are over 1100 boats in this event annually. Ben and his teammate paddled K-2 and never swam. The look on Ben's face sitting in the front of the K-2 said it all.

When Ben returned to the US he was taken with the paddling scene in South Africa. He immediately made plans to go back in November for the winter of 2003 and 2004. While there he raced the DUSI again finishing well and participated in local surf ski races, river races and "DICES", weekly time trials held by the local club on different nights, in the Durban area. He also ran a white water trip for five Americans on 5 different rivers.

Ben returned to the US in March and now lives in South Carolina. He is the co-owner of BEAKayaking through which he teaches sea kayaking, white water and surfing. He also works with a British boat manufacturer showing their boats up and down the eastern seaboard.

On a Wednesday night a few weeks ago he showed up unannounced at a MAPA practice on the Chesapeake Bay with his New Icon Surf Ski, and it was as if he never left.

Currently Ben is paddling and training with some well known paddlers including Robert Clegg and Holm Schmidt to participate in the US Sprint Championships in K-1, K-2, and K-4. The results will be out by the time this gets to print. Check them out to see how they did.

On July 1st Ben completed one of his proudest accomplishments and became a US Citizen.

Just as the end of summer signals the fall migration of waterfowl, I get the feeling that the crisp air of autumn will cause this waterman to once again yield to the urge to migrate to Durban. I wouldn't be surprised to hear that Ben once again has gone for the winter to play in the Paddling Mecca.