When Discovery Girls magazine set out to find 12 Rhode Island girls who could serve as role models to readers nationwide, they had hundreds of applications to choose from.

In the end, they chose two girls from Johnston – and put them both on the cover.

In the Jan. 6 issue of the Sun Rise, Johnston resident Dara Starring was featured as the cover girl for the Discovery Girls Middle School Edition. In that same Rhode Island issue, 12-year-old Mae Lynn Harrington was chosen as a cover girl for the younger Discovery Girls installment.

An eighth-grader at St. Mary’s Academy Bay View, Mae Lynn read that Discovery was coming to New England, and jumped at the chance to be in the magazine. She sent in her application right away, but didn’t stop to consider that the competition would be intense.

“I actually thought I did have a good chance because I didn’t know how many subscribers there were in Rhode Island,” she said.

That didn’t diminish her excitement when the magazine finally called.

“I was really excited. I screamed,” Mae Lynn said. “My friends were really happy for me.”

So were her parents, Pat and Michelle. When asked what he thought made his daughter’s application stand out, Pat believes it was the essay portion.

“I think it was the writing. She writes very well,” he said. “She puts a lot of detail and a lot of thought into it.”

In August of 2009, Mae Lynn and her parents spent two days in Boston, first getting to know the other Discovery girls at the Boston Ballet.

“I felt welcome and comfortable,” Mae Lynn recalled.

It was also her first time in Boston, so her family took some time to explore, checking out some of the city’s landmarks.

On the second day, the 12 girls got the red carpet treatment on an official photo shoot.

“It was fun. I felt like a star or something when they were taking our pictures,” Mae Lynn said.

Having to act like the other girls were her best friends when she only met them hours before wasn’t easy, but Mae Lynn learned a lot about herself in the process.

“I’m kind of shy but they had to put us together for a lot of the photos. I learned I could be more open to new people,” she said.

It would be another year before the Harringtons would see the January issue of Discovery Girls.

“We found out she was on the cover and that was the next excitement,” Pat said.

Now, Mae Lynn still keeps in touch with the other girls. They e-mail often, and maintain a chat forum on a website they built specifically to keep in touch. Over the weekend, they reunited for the first time at Dave and Buster’s in Providence.

Mae Lynn found that a lot could change in a year.

“We all look different. We changed a lot,” she said.

In addition to keeping in touch with her Discovery friends, Mae Lynn enjoys swimming, going to the beach and playing bass in the orchestra.

That’s when she has the time. The Bay View robotics team, S.M.A.R.T., occupies most of Mae Lynn’s afternoons. In the beginning of the year, they were practicing two or three days a week. In January, it was daily.

Just last weekend, the all-girls team won the state tournament at Roger Williams University, having beat out 60 other teams. She had to wake up at 5 a.m. and get to RWU for 7 a.m., and was there all day.

During one portion of the competition, S.M.A.R.T. designed a pair of glasses with LIDAR sensors to assist the visually impaired. The sensors scan a room and alert the person of changes in elevation, making the blind individual more independent.

“It was a long day but it was totally worth it,” she said. “One of the judges said that our team made a good impression on them.”

Mae Lynn has been a member of the team since she was in the sixth grade.

“I like technology and robotics, so I decided to check it out. It just sounded interesting,” she said.

Her first year, the Bay View team won at the state level and went on to Dayton, Ohio for the international competition. This year, they will go to St. Louis to compete against teams from around the world.

In addition to competing at the next level, all of the team members were awarded $20,000 scholarships to Roger Williams.

Mae Lynn isn’t sure where she’ll end up for college, but she does know what she wants to study.

“I want to go to school for something science related,” she said.

Mae Lynn also wants to see the world outside of Johnston.

“I’ve been reading about cool places. I’d like to travel around the world,” she said.

Regardless of where she ends up, Mae Lynn said she’d always remember the Discovery Girls experience.

“I think the experience overall has made me more confident and it taught me how to smile more,” she said.