A TRALEE secondary school student has been selected as a finalist in the Doodle 4 Google competition.

Sally O’Mahony from Mercy Secondary School Mounthawk is in with the chance of becoming this year’s overall champion.

This year, students were asked to design a Doodle based on the theme of ‘If I could create anything it would be…’ with the winning Doodle appearing on the Google homepage in April.

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Sally’s description of her effort (below) is; “I would create more awareness for the need to cherish nature. The scythe is cutting down the beautiful flowers, the sweltering sun melting our world, the man cutting down the tree is also metaphorically killing himself, and the fish will need to be equipped with oxygen masks if pollution continues.”

Voting to crown the winner of this year’s Doodle 4 Google competition will open from Tuesday, 7th of February and the public will have just two weeks to cast their votes with the poll closing on Tuesday 21st of February. Over 4,200 students across the country picked up their pens, pencils and crayons to enter this year’s competition with 75 finalists being shortlisted.

A panel of judges had the difficult task of selecting the 75 finalists from the thousands of entries that were received, the panel included John McDaid  Creative Director of Dog Ears, a children’s media company based in Derry who make TV, apps, books and events for kids, Aoife Doyle  Director and Co-founder of Pink Kong studios which is an award winning Dublin based animation studio that creates branded animated entertainment for TV, games, film and Advertising Houses and Dr. Andreas Bandelli, CEO of Science Gallery International.

Members of the public can vote from February 7th for their favourite Doodle on https://doodles.google.ie/d4g/.

Voting will close at midnight on the 21st of February. The five most popular doodles, one from each age category, will go forward to the grand final on April 3rd where the overall winner will be announced.

The winner will also receive a €5,000 scholarship towards their third-level studies, a Chromebook, and a €10,000 technology grant for their school. Each of the five class group winners and their teachers will also win a Chromebook each.