04/16/2024
Kyle Lewis circa 1995 Team Noleen Sizzler Yamaha. At one time, Kyle lived right around the corner from me next to Royal High School in Simi Valley. He was still a top amateur backed by Honda. I could be wrong about the model of pick up he had but I think he would load his bikes into a silver or blue 2WD Mazda long bed while I’d be walking to school. I was always so jealous 😂.
We had a some minor cash and product invested in team Noleen from 1994 through 1996. It was really just so simple. I called Clark and made him an offer to run our new “wild looking” moto numbers. This was before preprinted everything, of course. They actually had to peel and stick the numbers on the team number plates individually.
Kyle had a pretty damn impressive pro moto career. It’s a strange thing to have heroes in any capacity that you look up to or admire and then at some point, you run in the same circle as them. I lived one minute from Kyle when I was 15-17 years old and I never had the courage to stop by and talk to him. It’s been a minute since I’ve seen him but I know he is alive and well. I eventually got to now Kyle years later. I’ve always appreciated being able to meet so many of my moto heroes from when I was young. I know what it means to be 12 years old, staring through the chain link fences of the pits at the LA coliseum. I remember being in awe of Jeff Ward, Mark Barnett, Donnie Hansen, etc. but this is starting to sound more suited as a update.
NOLEEN shut down its race program for reasons unknown to me. I am assuming it had to do with a lack of funding due to sponsorship money and Larry Ward over achieving. We did graphics and numbers for Kyle when he went to race for Suzuki of Japan in 1997. I only have one cycle news clipping of his bike from that time. Sadly, it’s in black and white but the RM looked pretty badass. That is around the same time or a bit after was running . Beyond having our own race team in 1998 and 1999, the Team Noleen thing was the coolest things we were involved in, providing inspiration even to this day.
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