There are no words to describe how much we will miss you!

I originally met David Brinza and David Toyne around 2010 when my son visited Team 980 with his Webelos Scout den. I was impressed at how they took the time to talk to the 10-year-olds, answer their questions, and encourage them to pursue their interests in robotics and STEM. My son was doing FIRST LEGO League, so seeing the high school robotics team was pretty inspiring. And I was pretty impressed with them, myself – JPL! Universal Studios! These guys were heavy hitters! Little did I know then how much they would influence the course of our lives!

Flash forward to January 2013. My son has now aged out of his FLL team and is ready to join “the big team.” To say he was the proverbial “deer in the headlights” would be an understatement. It’s a big step to join a FIRST Robotics Competition team. But Brinza and Toyne had been mentoring Team 980 for a decade by that time, so they knew how to take a motivated rookie and turn him into an engineer. The photo is from my son’s first competition in March 2013 in which he’s working on the robot in the Team 980 pits with David Toyne, listening and watching as Toyne shows him something. It’s such a perfect Mentor/Student image, and one that was repeated so many times over the 2 decades that Brinza and Toyne were Lead and Design Mentors for Team 980. Two skilled, dedicated, caring individuals who inspired so many young engineers to pursue their ambitions.

Thanks to David Brinza, I’ve now been a mentor on Team 980 since 2015. FIRST has become a huge part of my life – mentoring, volunteering and advocating. I’m not an engineer, so this isn’t anything that I ever thought I could do, but just as Brinza and Toyne encouraged so many young engineers, they also encouraged me as a mentor. And the skills that I’ve developed as an FRC mentor I use in all aspects of my life.

Which brings us to June 2023. David Brinza has retired from a 35 year career at NASA/JPL and is relocating out of the area. David Toyne is overseeing an amazing green technology project in Africa. While they remain mentors for Team 980, they will no longer be with us in person on a daily basis, and it falls to me and my co-lead mentor, Alex, to continue the tradition of inspiring the future at Team 980.

I can’t fully express my gratitude for all that Brinza and Toyne brought to Team 980, except to compare my “deer in the headlights” son to the confident, capable Team Captain that he became 5 years later. I speak for the whole team when I say, “Thank you.”
-Robin, Co-Lead Mentor of Team 980