Hundreds of volunteers roll up their sleeves to help build Merrill Park playground

MILWAUKEE -- If you build it they will come. It was a huge turnout on Saturday, September 12th to give local children a place to play. Marquette University High School teamed up with hundreds of local volunteers to build a playground in one day.

KaBOOM playground

It was an attack on a trophy and a war on boredom led by those passionate for play.

"We have so many students here we had to shut down the database. We'll probably have 100+ students -- we have faculty, we have administrators," said Will Johnson, Marquette University Father's Club.

Across from Marquette University High School at Merrill Park is where it's all happening. Helping make the playground "KaBOOM" possible, is the Marquette University High School Father's Club.

"They'll actually use this art, they'll be able to do a lot of the playground teaching elements out here," said Co-President of Father's Club, Dave Salter.

Salter and the Father's Club raised money and recruited volunteers for the morning build.

KaBOOM playground

KaBOOM took several weeks planning leading up to this day and more than 200 volunteers worked at different stations to build the playground in about six hours.

KaBOOM playground

Bryan Macnamara is a project organizer helping KaBOOM find corporate sponsors to make the build possible.

"We have seventeen team leaders today that were trained two days ago and they are leading their team whether it's five teams assembling playground components, six teams side projects -- we have benches, we have picnic tables," said Macnamara.

The fundamental idea for the project is "play makes it possible," and having a playground will inspire children to do just that.

KaBOOM is a national non-profit and in nearly twenty years has helped open or build more than 16,000 playgrounds.

KaBOOM playground