By DAVID VANTRESS

For Northwest News

Carroll High School cheerleader Ailani Roach has signed a letter of intent to cheer at Purdue University. Roach signed the pledge at an April 26 ceremony at Carroll.

Roach said getting the chance to be a Boilermaker cheerleader is a dream come true.

“It’s surreal,” an emotional Roach said. “I’ve worked so hard for this for years.”

Even though the West Lafayette campus of one of the Hoosier state’s flagship institutions of higher education is a large one — the size of a small city at more than 2,500 acres with more than 50,000 undergraduate and graduate students enrolled in Fall 2022 — Roach said it feels like home to her.

“It’s a beautiful campus,” Roach said. “I’m very home-grown, and it’s closest to home, too.”

A part of two state champion Carroll cheer squads, Roach plans to continue to strive for excellence at Purdue.

Roach will start out studying nutrition with an eye toward getting into nursing school. She wants to be a nurse practitioner specializing in pediatrics.