SAN ANTONIO — At a time when most kids are playing in the sun, Johnson High School band students are hard at work playing their instruments in the sun.
They spend 12 weeks practicing outdoors and in classrooms, for nine hours straight through the summer.
"They have to learn 100 pages in their drill charts," Band Director Alan Sharps said. "For each one of the pages, they have a responsibility for a position on the field."
Timing is everything, especially when hundreds of others are counting on you. Each drill provides a different challenge for all 345 students who have to work together to make it all come together.
Sharps credits their success to the long hours and year-round dedication. Others credit him and his nearly 40 years of experience band directing across the country. He and the bands he's directed have won an array of awards.
For example, when he was the band director at Winston Churchill High School, the band was a four-time finalist at the Bands of America Grand National Championships in Indianapolis.
These awards are just snapshots of his many achievements, but there's one that makes him especially happy.
"I had the opportunity to teach Pharrell Williams," Sharps said. "He was in the drum line at Princess Anne High School, and Pharrell was a great student."
Williams is an 11-time Grammy Award-winning artist and producer.
"I got a call several years ago from his mom saying Pharrell was coming back home and performing," Sharps said. "I was sitting in the audience when he walked in to address the audience. He saw me immediately and it was like old home week."
Even today, Pharrell credits much of his discipline and success as an artist to that band program Mr. Sharps directed and that's really the point here. Learning from this band family and taking away valuable life lessons is what Sharps says he hopes to instill in the students.
"They become acclimated to the hard work that they need to have," Sharps said. "It sets them up for doing great work in the classroom also."
