Kim Wilson
Kim and her husband Guy joined shortly after the Clubs formation in 1993.
Kim was a keen trainer. She was good at all three sports; swimming was her strength, with a love of bike riding.
Kim was one of the original club members who represented the club on several occasions in the early days of its participation in the Triathlon NSW Club Championships.
Kim was given the responsibility of organizing the clubs First Presentation Night which was held at the former Castle Hill Community Centre. Which she organized for many of the following years.
Kim’s enduring contribution to the Hills Triathlon Club lingers to this day. The club’s initial colors were Purple and Yellow. This clashed with the LAPD colors. The club was required to change its colours by Triathlon NSW. It was Kim who championed the move by the club that saw it adopt its now iconic and famous Red, Black and White colours.
Kim passed away on Sunday 18 October 1999, in a collision with a car whilst on a bike training ride along Castle Hill Road fellow Club Members, Lyn and Allan Wright.
The Club in recognition of her wonderful involvement in the club and to ensure her memory lived on instituted the Kim Wilson Memorial Award.
As a mark of respect in recognition of her outstanding involvement in The Hills Triathlon Club, the club was proud to posthumously award her Life Membership of the Club.
Ron Smith
Ron was a local Hills resident and took up Triathlon as it gained a niche in the Australian Sporting landscape.
He first joined the Galston Triathlon Club and through that membership became a Founding Management Committee member of the fledgling Triathlon NSW.
He was keen to see the sport take its place in the sporting landscape in the Hills District. Hence he organised the first ever Triathlon in the district.
Ron was a founding Committee member of the club and remained so for many years.
Ron raced widely and was a real motivating force for the club, racing in the first Club presence at the Triathlon NSW Club Championships.
He is a several time Hawaii Ironman competitor and has his own number for finishing 10 Australian Ironman.
Ron was awarded his Life Membership in recognition of his foresight in introducing Triathlon to the Hills District, his long and constructive contribution to the Clubs Management structure, the pride he exhibited in racing including numerous Triathlon Club Championships.
Ron now lives at Noosa on the Sunshine Coast and still competes regularly in Triathlon and running events. He is a member of the Noosa Triathlon Club these days, however, Ron is still very well respected by all club members at Hills Tri, and still regularly makes the trip to NSW help Hills at the annual Club Champs.
Allan & Lyn Wright
Our founding members who first conceived, through to the creation of the Hills Triathlon Club. Lyn and Allan lived in Roxborough Park within a stones throw from the pool where the Hills Club first started.
They put an advertisement into the local paper looking for expressions of interest in the formation of a local triathlon club. A handful of people responded, and from these humble beginnings our club has grown into what it is today, over 400 members strong.
Allan and Lyn were instrumental in the clubs formation and they were also core of our original committee. Allan served on the Clubs Executive Committee in various roles including being our Foundation President. Allan was an integral part of our Executive for the first 5 years of our club. Allan and Lyn organised our original training sessions, drew up a club charter, organised races and planted the seeds for our inclusive and supportive club culture.
They raced Club champs for many years
Lyn went on to race several at World Championships , placing 4th in her age group in Honolulu. She also completed The Hawaiian Ironman , as always supported by Allan.
They are now retired and living on the Gold Coast, however, still make time to come support Hills at club champs when the schedule permits!
Deb & Pete Henniker
Deb was club president for 3 years from 2007 – 2010. During her leadership, our club was taken to a whole new level of professionalism. We saw a dramatic increase in numbers to our race series, and club membership exploded to over 300.
Much of this success was attributed to the incredible work Deb, and her husband Pete, put into the weekly Brick sessions at Parramatta Park. They would be there every single week, meeting new people and making them feel welcome to the triathlon fraternity. They helped instill a real sense of club pride amongst members, and started us on our journey to club champs success, planting the seeds in our DNA that would ensure we wouldn’t finish outside of the top 3 from 2014 onwards. The club champs strategic platform they came up with is still use to this day, and has been successfully leveraged to take home 3 club champs titles ( 2 Senior and 1 Junior)
Recognizing there was a big opportunity over winter for someone to host winter racing events, Peter put together our clubs first Duathlon. The first race was at Eastern Creek Raceway in 2007 which had 66 people racing. The following year the Sydney Duathlon Series was born with 4 races at Parramatta Park. The idea was to provide racing for the members, year round and was a club building initiative. Pete would always be the first to arrive and last to leave at every race year round, both the triathlon and duathlons. He would be in charge of over 1000 athletes each season as race director. Pete is also responsible for the race layout and formats we still use today. The Hennikers have moved in recent years up to the Hunter Valley, however, are nearly always to be found at iconic events in NSW like Port IM and Husky giving hills members a cheer.
Steve Moxey
Steve (also known by his surname only “Moxey”) is a weekend warrior who loves long course racing. He is the heart and soul of our club. Keen to get involved in the running of the club, he started helping out with our duathlon series, assisting with the set up and pack up of transition equipment. When Peter Henniker retired as Race Director, Steve was keen to pick up the reins and continue Peters work.
As Race Director, he bought a whole new level of professionalism to our events, and over the next few years, our race series grew into the largest club race series in all of Australia.
Steve was in charge of 11 events each year, catering for over 2500 entrants. After stepping down as Race Director in 2015, he took up a position as timing coordinator. In the following few years, Steve has become a master in electronic timing systems. As a result, we now are in a position to have our race results published within a few minutes of all competitors having completed our triathlons. Steve is so professionally that he is regularly recruited by other events companies to do timing for their events as well.
Steve is a volunteer powerhouse. In his time as a club member, he has volunteered at over 100 events. If you have raced a Hill Tri Club event in the past 8 years, then Steve was either your Race Director, or coordinated your electronic time. Usually this has meant Steve has had to forgo racing himself, and we are eternally grateful to him! Steve is still an active club member, and still runs all our club timing (he is now training a few timing apprentices)
Scott Tallis
There isn’t a single person in our club who has done more volunteer work than Scott Tallis (also known as McGyver)
When our club race series first really started to take off, Scott organized a working bee at his house to build the racks. As our race series started to sell out in 2014, he organized a second working bee to build more. If you’ve raced with hills tri club, then you’ve set up bike on a Scott Tallis built and certified bike rack.
A former club Vice President, Scott mastered the art of the transition setup. With a few assistants, Scott would have our entire race set up and ready to go in an hour. He was nearly always the first to arrive at race HQ, and last to leave after race pack up, meaning that nearly event for over half a decade, Scott would be at race for us volunteering for over 8 hours.
Scott used to run training session group rides from his house and take new members around with his cycling group on weekends, and is a former club Vice President.
When we made the permanent move to host all racing at the SIRC, Scott organized a custom built trailer for all our club equipment, further streamlining the setup and pack up process as everything we own fits into them perfectly – including all racks, eskies and tents.
John Zahra
John joined the Hills Tri Club back in 1994. The club only had about 90 members at the time.
Soon after joining the club John became the club treasurer. He served as treasurer through until 2011 making him the longest serving management committee member in the club’s history. Throughout this time, he helped grow the club to well over 300 members.
Apart from John’s long tenure as treasurer he was also an avid volunteer. Always at every club race helping, manning the BBQ at our annual membership days, helping set up and welcoming new members to the Saturday brick sessions and He was always resent at all working bee’s.
For many years John would host the management committee meetings at his own house graciously organising food and drink for everyone.
Throughout his time at Hills Tri Club John gave all the race distances a go from enticer through to Ironman culminating in his finish at Challenge Roth.
One of John’s biggest commitments to the club was when he lent the club a sizable amount of money for us to buy our first timing system. This made the Hills Tri Club one of the first clubs in Australia to offer chip timing at their races. This was a major factor in the growth of our race series.
For these reasons John Zahra is awarded the 9th Hills Triathlon Club Life Member.
Karen Tallis
Karen Tallis joined the club in 2007. Memories are often shared on how Karen attended brick training sessions in the early years, smashing out a training set, and still managing to look glamorous afterwards, always dressing colour coordinated, especially with a dash of pink.
Karen Tallis has been actively involved as a competitor and volunteer ever since she joined the club. As a competitor she has tried every distance, and in 2009 did her first Ironman at Port Macquarie. In 2019 she completed her 7th Ironman and is already planning number 8.
In 2014 she was Hills Tri Club Women’s Club Champion. As a volunteer Karen has always been involved. When her husband, Scott was Vice President, Karen was always by his side assisting. Karen was then Vice President from 2015 to 2018. Whilst Vice President, amongst other duties, she actively assisted with organising all the alcohol and food for club champs and managed multiple sponsor relationships.
If Karen is racing, she is always there to volunteer at rego. Before every race, she always asks how else she can help. Even this season, Karen has continued to be an active volunteer even although she is not a committee member.
Karen was also part of the management committee that orchestrated the winning streak of three in a row at Club Champs.
Karen has true club spirit: she is a fierce competitor, a female advocate, a mum who encourages her own children to participate and be active members, and a supporter of all other members.
For this reason, Karen Tallis became the 10th Hills Triathlon Club Life Member.
