Playground Passport Challenge Draws Competitive Edge; Local Parent Clears All 14 Sites In Single Afternoon

WAUKESHA — Tom Kaschinski, 42, of the town's east side, completed all 14 stops on the city's Playground Passport program in 6 hours and 23 minutes Saturday, a pace that left no time for his three children to leave the minivan at any location beyond a supervised perimeter walk, and in four cases, no time to leave it at all.

The Playground Passport, run by the city's Parks and Recreation Department through October 11, asks participants to visit all 14 designated playgrounds and answer a location-specific question at each stop in exchange for entry into a prize package. The program was designed to be completed at a family's own pace over roughly three months. Kaschinski completed it between 9:14 a.m. and 3:37 p.m.

"The goal was to get outside and have fun," said Parks Director Michael Torres. "Tom achieved the logistics. The fun part, we're still workshopping."

"I wasn't trying to set a record. I just had the spreadsheet open and it kept telling me we could make the 3:40 window if we skipped Frame Park's long way in."

— Tom Kaschinski, 42, Playground Passport participant

A Rotating System

Kaschinski's three children, ages 11, 9, and 6, rotated through a system he described as "one out, two in, every stop," in which a single child exited the vehicle at each location to read the placard question aloud through the open door, record the answer in the booklet balanced on the center console, and return. Kaschinski said the rotation was designed so that no one child read more than five placards over the course of the day, a workload he called "fair, given the circumstances."

The 6-year-old, assigned the fewest stops under the rotation, spent the bulk of the afternoon in a booster seat watching episodes of a tablet show Kaschinski declined to name, pausing twice, by his account, to ask whether they were "still doing the park thing."

"They were. We were still doing the park thing," Kaschinski said.

The Record, Such As It Is

Torres said the department does not maintain an official leaderboard for passport completion times, noting that a family attempted the full 14-stop circuit in a single day in early August and submitted a completed passport without incident. What distinguishes Kaschinski's run, Torres said, is the near-total absence of play at any location, a condition the August family's attempt did not meet.

"That family let their kids actually get on the equipment for a few minutes at each stop," Torres said. "Tom's family, from what I understand, mostly stayed in the vehicle. I want to be careful not to call that a record, because I don't know what it's a record of. But it is, as far as I know, the fastest we've heard about."

Kaschinski's wife, Beth, who did not participate in Saturday's run, said she learned of the final time when her husband texted her a photo of the completed booklet from the Hillcrest stop, the thirteenth of fourteen, with the message "11 min ahead of pace." She said she had not been aware there was a pace.

What The Prize Will Be

Torres said completed passports are processed in the order received regardless of completion speed, meaning Kaschinski's prize package, still being finalized, will arrive on the same schedule as any other family's. He described the package as "a bundle, still being finalized, but it will include something water-related," language he confirmed was unchanged from his description of the prize in early August.

Kaschinski said he has no plans to attempt a faster run before the October 11 deadline, citing both a lack of remaining playgrounds to visit and what he called "diminishing enthusiasm from the back seat." He said his children had asked, specifically, to be allowed to get out of the van next time.

"We're going to go back to some of these, just to actually play," Kaschinski said. "Not for the passport. Just because they're there."

The Playground Passport program runs through October 11 at all 14 designated Waukesha playgrounds. Completed passports can be submitted at the Parks and Recreation office inside City Hall.