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New year, new playground at St. Mary’s

Original Article Link: http://www.omaha.com/sarpy/bellevue/new-year-new-playground-at-st-mary-s/article_17aacb84-5475-53f6-9019-dc3e051881bd.html

By Toni Furmanski / Leader Staff Writer  Aug 30, 2014

It was no sooner than St. Mary Catholic Church priest, the Rev. Dennis Hanneman, said, “Amen,” than a group of eager students made a mad dash for the new playground at St. Mary’s Catholic Grade School.

It was a long time coming, considering it had been 20 years since the school had last updated its playground.

On Aug. 11, to help kick off the new school year, they held a blessing ceremony along with the school’s traditional ice cream social.

Hanneman took a moment to say a few words, said a prayer and blessed the equipment during the ceremony.

“This new playground equipment,” Hanneman said, “represents in a lot of ways the work of a lot of people — a lot of people who will be using this, mainly our children.”

The school raised the funds through an auction. The Knights of Columbus donated money and parents also made contributions.

The new playground, created through Creative Sites LLC, was completed a couple of weeks ago by more than 40 volunteers.

Karen Medrano, the vice president of Home and School, was one of the heads of this project and said some of the benefits is the ecoturf surfacing, made out of recycled tires. The new surface is a much better fit for the school, than the old wood chips the staff had to deal with in the past.

“It’s a cost every year,” Medrano said. “It gets spread out, it gets brought in. That (ecoturf) has a 10-foot safety fall. Those (woodchips) had no safety fall.”

Another benefit, she said, is that this playground is something the whole school can use. Because of its design, which was specifically chosen with all age levels in mind, there are no restrictions for the older students.

“The last one, only children up to fourth grade could play on it,” Medrano said. “There’s no restriction, that was our main goal.”

The playground can also be used by the physical education teacher because it has some strength building and agility features on it.

The school’s principal, Cheryl Castle, added that all the students have been anticipating this new addition to the school.

“They’ve been checking on it all summer,” she said. “The older kids can go on this, so they’re excited to check it out.