BATON ROUGE - More than 30 new troopers have been welcomed to the ranks of Louisiana State Police Friday.

LSP announced the graduation of its 97th cadet class Friday morning. The 35 cadets completed their 20-week journey with a ceremony at the BREC Independence Park Theatre and Cultural Center in Baton Rouge.

The class began with 49 cadets on Nov. 5, 2017. After months of rigorous training for crash investigation, emergency vehicle operations, impaired driving detection, traffic incident management, and leadership, only 35 remained.

The newly-graduated troopers will soon deploy across the state, where they will participate in a 10 to 14-week field training program while supervised by a senior state trooper.