Delaware Christian’s Tobin open to opportunities

Story and photo by

LIZ ROBERTSON

Delaware Chris­t­ian School’s David Tobin

David Tobin has attended Delaware Chris­t­ian School (DCS) since kindergarten.

“I can’t believe senior year is a quar­ter way over already,” he said. “I’m not sure if I’m here more or at home.”

He admit­ted he will miss the school that has been such a part of his life.

“I enjoy the school, the Chris­t­ian envi­ron­ment. And the aca­d­e­mics are good,” he said.

Bible teacher Steve Hovda said David’s GPA speaks for itself, as does his ath­letic, music and stu­dent gov­ern­ment involvement.

“The qual­i­ties that stand out to me are his com­pas­sion for oth­ers, often less for­tu­nate than he, his unflap­pable demeanor in tough sit­u­a­tions and his obvi­ous Chris­t­ian con­vic­tions. Those are not always easy to observe, but in my deal­ings with David in the class­room, ath­letic field and class gov­ern­ment, he excels in them all,” Hovda said.

David plays both soc­cer and bas­ket­ball for the school. Because DCS is a smaller school, he can be involved in more activ­i­ties, he said. He also likes the aspect of see­ing every­one each day, from sev­enth grade through the seniors, and “get­ting to know peo­ple more.”

David is con­sid­er­ing The Ohio State Uni­ver­sity, and Pur­due Uni­ver­sity and the Uni­ver­sity of Cincin­nati. While OSU is much larger than his high school, he thinks attend­ing the larger school would be a good experience.

He plans to major in engi­neer­ing, though he is still “nar­row­ing it down.” David enjoys math and sci­ence and said when­ever there was prob­lem in his physics class, he would want to fig­ure out how to solve it.

“I like hands-on, a mix of math and sci­ence,” he said. With all the direc­tions he could go in engi­neer­ing, he is not cer­tain of his choice yet, but said that mechan­i­cal engi­neer­ing is at the top of his list right now.

“Aca­d­e­mics are impor­tant to me,” he said.

Sci­ence teacher Johanna McDon­ald has taught David in three sci­ence courses.

“He has con­sis­tently been a top stu­dent aca­d­e­m­i­cally, a posi­tion he has attained because of a bright mind cou­pled with dili­gence and thor­ough­ness in class­room prepa­ra­tion. He has always been respect­ful and polite toward adults and fel­low stu­dents, qual­i­ties that have made him a friend to all in our small school. I espe­cially enjoyed read­ing his test essays in anatomy con­cern­ing the func­tion of spe­cific sys­tems in the human body. In them he revealed a great respect for the cre­ator and designer of life.

“David has taken his per­sonal faith and his walk with God just as seri­ously as his aca­d­e­mic pur­suits. We are grate­ful to have had him as a stu­dent at Delaware Chris­t­ian, and we will miss him next year,” McDon­ald said.

Church and his youth group are other impor­tant areas in David’s life.

Through his church, David took two mis­sion trips to Navajo reser­va­tions over spring break his fresh­man and sopho­more years.

“We worked with the local church out there. I spent time at schools read­ing to kids and help­ing with math,” he said, adding, “It was a big change.”

See­ing dif­fer­ences in cul­tural lifestyles has had an impact on David’s perspective.

“We take what we have for granted — cars, clothes, food, good edu­ca­tion. Then you see some­one liv­ing in a shack, and real­ize it is here as well, but you just don’t see it. I real­ized you do not have to go to a Navajo reser­va­tion to see it,” David said.

David’s main vol­un­teer efforts in the com­mu­nity have been around his school and church. He spent 40 hours last spring break work­ing in the school court yard and has helped at vaca­tion Bible school for sev­eral years.

“I enjoy being in a Chris­t­ian school, going to church, liv­ing out my faith in daily life and serv­ing oth­ers,” David said.

David also attended the Hugh O’Brien Youth Lead­er­ship Con­fer­ence his sopho­more year and was part of the Delaware Area Youth Lead­er­ship Pro­gram spon­sored by the Delaware Cham­ber of Com­merce his junior year.

“These pro­grams chal­lenged me to step out of my com­fort zone and be a leader in my school and my com­mu­nity,” David said. He also received the His­tory Award from the Daugh­ters of the Amer­i­can Rev­o­lu­tion and the Honda Math Award.

With his final bas­ket­ball sea­son just under way, David said he is excited for his final year.

“We lost a lot of seniors this year,” he said, “but I think it will be a good year.”

He has played the sport since 7th grade, at first lik­ing bas­ket­ball bet­ter than soc­cer. But he admit­ted that soc­cer has “grown on me.”

He has already played his last soc­cer game. Play­ing for the last six years, he said, “It is kind of sad. It’s hard to believe it’s over. But it’s got to end sometime.”

David is class trea­surer this year; in past years, he has been pres­i­dent and vice pres­i­dent of his class.

“We’re in the process of plan­ning our senior trip,” he said. The class is unsure of where they will be going yet, but David will be the one deter­min­ing the finan­cial aspects once the deci­sion is made.

He also plays trom­bone in band, start­ing the instru­ment in ele­men­tary school.

It’s been a busy year so far, oper­at­ing a lawn mow­ing busi­ness with his dad over the summer.

In his spare time, David likes to do is watch other school sports teams and cheer them on.

His advises his younger school­mates to enjoy the expe­ri­ence. “It goes really fast. Always work hard. Give your best. We’re all account­able to God to use the abil­i­ties he gave us.”

David is the son of Robert and Mary Ellen Tobin of Ostrander.

Posted by Liz Robertson on Nov 9 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.