!["I owe my parents everything," Hannah Tomlinson says. Picture by Mark Bode "I owe my parents everything," Hannah Tomlinson says. Picture by Mark Bode](/images/transform/v1/crop/frm/KUhQizDbwW8WqAyPP4x5yp/9fe570ef-2be0-4fc4-90a7-c4394b1fcb58.jpg/r0_0_3674_2923_w1200_h678_fmax.jpg)
First things first. Hannah Tomlinson has a strong aversion to birds.
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But if she were feeling anxious about conducting this interview from alongside the duck pond at Bicentennial Park, she did a good job masking it.
In fact, there was nothing about Tomlinson's demeanour that suggested she was anything other than firmly strapped into the driver's seat of this often turbulent ride we call life, her hands steady on the wheel and her eyes fixed on the road ahead.
A wife and a mother. A branch manager for an occupational rehabilitation provider. And a co-founder and driving force behind one of the region's great success stories of recent years: Tamworth Swans netball.
Tomlinson is all these things - and more.
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She is also grateful. Because in her parents, Mike and Jill McKenzie, she has role models she remains in awe of. Tomlinson said she would be "doing very well" if she were "half as supportive" as them.
"I owe my parents everything," she said, adding: "They are just genuinely two beautiful people."
Tomlinson calls her father her "right-hand man" at Swans netball. He has been by her side as the organisation grew from three teams in their debut season in 2020 to 17 teams last season, when they won the C- and D-grade premierships and were A-grade runners up.
Tomlinson said it was "a running joke" that her father was now providing her with more support than her elder brother, Swans AFL president Josh McKenzie. And as such, she was her father's "favourite" child. "I got chosen," she added.
"He's just happy to be involved in any way that he can help me," the Swans netball coordinator said of her dad, who coached her throughout her junior netball days.
Next season was shaping as "an interesting landscape" for Swans netball, Tomlinson continued, as the club sharpened their focus on junior development.
"And this little project has just gone bang," she said of the club - her baby.
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