The club meets every Tuesday night.
Lee Stevens enjoys leading a club which, he says, can help take the stress out of life.
He’s the president of the Te Kūiti BMX Club and he is encouraging the community to get involved in a sport he says can help all ages improve their mental health.
“It’s about getting people exercising and off the computers and screens. It’s a really good family gathering. Kids and adults all hang out and have fun together,” Lee said.
“It takes about 50 seconds to do one lap around the BMX track. You actually burn your fight-or-flight mechanism.
“If you’re building up stress for weeks. You can go out and thrash it, five laps around the track. You’re burning all those endorphins off. You’re on a bit of a high for a couple of days afterwards. It gives you a mental health lift.
“I’m much happier if I’m regularly riding.”
The Te Kūiti BMX club started in 1986 and is one of six New Zealand affiliated clubs in the Waikato region.
“We’re really lucky in the Waikato because we’ve got Te Kūiti, Hamilton, Te Awamutu, Cambridge, Te Aroha and Paeroa BMX clubs,” Lee said.
“It’s like a hub. If we host an event, we’ll get people from other clubs coming along to help us run it.
“We recently had an open day, a have a go day, and about 80 people came along. It was good.”
Te Kūiti members meet every Tuesday and include training and games to get children used to manoeuvring their bikes on their floodlit track.
“You can turn up with nothing, hire a bike and helmets and get to ride around the track. You just have to be fully covered, no skin showing.”
Lee joined the William St based club in 2019 after several decades away from the sport.
He had previously been involved with the Masterton club in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
As the cliché goes, it was just like riding a bike, he hadn’t lost his passion for it.
“When I found out we had a track here and there’s a BMX shop in Ōtorohanga to get bits and pieces for bikes, I thought that was cool. Then my youngest daughter got into it too,” Lee said.
“It’s an awesome sport and it’s an individual sport. Whatever you put in is what you get back.
“The BMX community is awesome. If you want to meet a really good bunch of people, get a race licence, start racing and you can meet cool people up and down the country.”
He says the Te Kūiti track is good for beginners.
“I race in the 50 plus category and there’s about 25 of us in New Zealand that have race licenses. Then there’s 55 plus and then there’s 60 plus and 65 plus. It goes up every five years.
“I’ve been racing again for about five years and the guys in our age group, just rock up to the track and have a chat. We race and have a good yarn afterwards.”
Another valuable member in the club is life member Richard Scott, a member of the Te Kūiti BMX Club for 19 years.
Richard began racing BMX in 1979, also starting in Masterton. He loves the sport and family environment.
Karl Thurston, a 2024 UCI BMX Racing World Championships rider, has recently run free BMX lessons for children in Te Kūiti.
He was born in Te Kūiti but moved to Tauranga in recent years.
“What kid doesn’t like riding a bike? When I was at primary school, high school, I rode everywhere. Even once I got my driver’s license, I’d still ride all over town to go to my mate’s places or to go to the track, because – especially in Te Kūiti – you could do that,” Karl said.
“I grew up in Te Kūiti and no matter what happened in life, I’d always end up back at Te Kūiti BMX. It’s just the nature of sport. When you’re involved in any sort of club, it becomes your family.
“I could go to the track and it didn’t matter who you were riding with. You just got to go hang out, help each other and try things you’re working on to get better.
“Te Kūiti BMX Club was the glue of that, I could always fall back on it.”
Karl said the sport has taught him invaluable life skills. He recommends everyone to give it a chance.
“It’s like a bug when you enjoy it, you just want to keep going,” he said.
“I love team sports, don’t get me wrong, but through life you’ve got to learn to battle out on your own a bit. I got a lot of that resilience from BMX growing up.
“It’s also very positive. You’ve always got people around you that help get you back up and get going again. If you have a crash, it teaches you pretty fast to get up and at least finish the race with pride.
“It’s all or nothing. You can’t blame someone else for what you’ve done wrong and then when you achieve something, you’ve achieved that. It’s satisfying.”
