Alberton parents, Ron and Zelma Kromrey were keeping a secret from their daughter, Lyssah.

“For over a month we knew about it, it was hard to keep secret,” said Ron.

The school principal, Kyle Fisher, was also holding the secret and tricked the entire student body when he held an all-school assembly last Wednesday afternoon. He said Google representatives were at the school to give a presentation because they were a 1-1 Google device school, meaning there’s one Google Chromebook per student.

All of the students were given Google T-shirts, and so the audience was filled with brightly colored red, green, blue, and yellow clad students. Only the shirts for grades six through 12 arrived, however, and the rest of the elementary students received their shirts later.

But instead of a presentation, Google representatives announced that seventh-grader Lyssah was the winner of the ninth annual “Doodle 4 Google” competition. There are 53 winners in the contest, one from each state, as well as from Washington D.C., Guam and Puerto Rico.

Sen. Jon Tester was also at the assembly and started out the presentation with a talk about when he was growing up, they didn’t have access to the internet.

“We didn’t have iPhones or iPads. Now, if you want to know how deep the ocean is, you can Google it,” he said.

Google representatives, Ryan Brown from San Francisco and Justin Nabozna from New York, then talked about the Google Doodle team and explained about the doodle competition.

“Creative youth are what’s driving technological advances these days,” said Nabozna.

Last year, the contest was “What makes me…me” and was won by Akilah Johnson from Washington, D.C. Montana’s winner was Jessie Novak from Hellgate High School in Missoula. This year’s theme was “What I see for the future.” They asked if anyone had entered the contest and a few students raised their hands, including Lyssah.

Nabozna then said, “the winner from Montana is right here in this room” and he announced Lyssah’s name. She said she had no idea that she had won when she came up in front of the assembly. Everyone applauded as Sen. Tester presented her with an award of an Android tablet and a T-shirt with her doodle. The group unveiled her doodle which was blown up onto a large board several feet high and wide, with a huge display of balloons on top to decorate the piece.

Her doodle was filled with swirls of blues, purples, and reds with dots of white stars. The word “Google” had the “G” as an orange sun, “o” was a drawing of earth, the next “o” was an astronaut, “g” was a green alien with a giant eye, “l” was a UFO, and the final “e,” was a rocket.

It was titled, “Space Journey,” and in her description she wrote, “I did a space theme because I think we are going to have to move into space, or something big will happen in space technology. I used colored pencils and a white paint to color my doodle.”

“Space technology is big and people are now trying to get to Mars, and that was my inspiration,” she told the crowd.

Five finalists will be selected from the 53 winners and they will be flown to San Francisco where the national winner will be announced. The winner will receive a $30,000 college scholarship, and their school will be awarded a $50,000 computer lab or a technology program.

Judges for the art contest include artists, engineers, writers, athletes, and celebrities. This year’s judges are singer-songwriter, Sia, Gold Medalist gymnast Simone Biles, Pokemon’s Pikachu’s creative team, TV host Jimmy Kimmel, animator Floyd Norman, writer and director Brenda Chapman and engineer Tracy Drain.

The winning doodles are also judged by public voting and are online at doodles.google.com/d4g. People can vote once a day until March 6.

“Kids are our future and I can’t overstate that, with the Google folks here you can just see the excitement on these kid faces, they are just fired up about life,” Tester said. “They are our next generation of leaders. When we were younger, the internet wasn’t around. Now this is a big part of their lives and, and I think it’s incredibly important. These kids are more tech savvy than I’ll ever be, and wanted to get out here and show these kids that we think what they’re doing is important. We need to support what they’re doing. Education is important and they’re success is important to everyone no matter where you live. They’re success is going to make life better for everybody.”

Tester is also a great supporter of the arts and earned a degree in music from the College of Great Falls.

“I think the arts are critically important. If there’s one thing I’d say for Lyssah, is that the creativity here is just over the top,” he said. “If you take a look at what came out of her mind and what she was able to put on paper, it was just amazing.”

After the assembly, students left to return to their classrooms and Lyssah stayed behind for interviews and for photos in front of her design. Fisher announced that her drawing would be on display in the cafeteria on the play stage and eventually hung up.

“This has been an amazing experience,” Lyssah said after it was over. “I did this drawing because space is cool.”

She also placed at a recent Math Counts competition in Missoula, and won the Alberton Spelling Bee. Her parents said she’s very self-motivated when it comes to her studies. She loves music and can plays bass in the school’s pep band, as well as the mandolin, guitar, keyboard, violin, and African drums.

“She loves music,” her dad said, “and whatever she picks up (to play) she just keeps practicing until she can do it.”

Lyssah said she doesn’t really have a favorite subject, instead stating that “I like them all. I’m working hard and so I can get into college.” But she doesn’t know for sure what her major will be at this point.”

According to the Google website, “doodles are fun, surprising, and sometimes spontaneous changes that are made to the Google logo to celebrate holidays, anniversaries, and the lives of famous artists, pioneers, and scientists.”

The concept of the doodle was born when Google founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, played with the corporate logo to indicate their attendance at the Burning Man Festival in the Nevada desert. They placed a stick figure drawing behind the second “o” in the word, Google, and the revised logo was intended as a comical message to Google users that the founders were “out of office.” In 2000, the two asked their webmaster, Dennis Hwang, to produce a doodle for Bastille Day. The doodle was so well received by Google users that Hwang was appointed “chief doodler” and they started to show up more regularly on the Google homepage. The doodles represent events, anniversaries and birthdays from John James Audubon to the ice cream sundae.

The doodles continue to grow in popularity and over the years, the Google team has created over 2000 doodles for homepages around the world. There is a team of doodlers who create the doodles seen and the public can submit ideas, as well.