They climbed, they slid, they crawled, they jumped.

“I definitely think it’s a very big improvement from the last one that we had, because this one is bigger and more, um, woodsy,” said Jaxon Crossen, 13, of Maumee as he climbed off of a play structure designed to look like a treehouse. “And it works pretty good.”

The 13-year-old and his brother Jameson Crossen, 9, were among a dozen children who tried out the brand-new playground equipment Wednesday in Maumee as adults held a ribbon-cutting ceremony hosted by Maumee Chamber of Commerce.

The Nature Play Treehouse at Robert S. Hoag Ford Field includes a rock-climbing wall, a crawl-through log tunnel, and two enclosed spiral-tube slides.

“There’s like a tree with climbing aspects to it,” the Gateway Middle School seventh grader explained

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