The sun’s beating down on the concrete marching band pad, and it’s only 9:30 in the morning. Scattered around the edges of the pad are red, blue and orange Igloo water coolers so the musicians can stay hydrated in the hot Texas heat.

Nearby, groups of young men wearing football pads, helmets and T-shirts are running drills, catching footballs and hitting the grass, making sure everybody understands what plays to run and how to protect each other during a game.

Rolling carts filled with water and Gatorade dot the sidelines, and trainers make sure the coolers stay full as well as watching for signs of heat exhaustion.

It’s summer, but these teens are rising above the heat and humidity. At least a month before school starts, band members spend the morning practicing their marching routines.

After they finish on the practice pad, they spend the afternoon in a classroom, sections playing together so they’ll have one unified sound.

The dance team and cheer squad are also practicing for hours every day, right alongside the flag twirlers who must match their movements with the band’s music. It looks easy, watching them throw their flags up in the air, but to choreograph those movements between a dozen teens and a 200-member marching band takes an incredible amount of practice.

Adults are out there every step of the way. Wearing oversized hats and sunglasses, they’re shouting directions into a bullhorn, redrawing patterns or looking for small mistakes so that when the time to perform arrives, they’ll be flawless.

Once school starts, dozens of teens will be staying after school practicing for the upcoming school musical, and teachers will be right there with them, singing songs, practicing lines and choreographing dance moves.

Athletes will be in the weight room, preparing for the upcoming winter and spring sports, knowing that if they work hard now, their chances of making the team are greatly enhanced. Nobody’s standing over them – they’re working hard because their hearts tell them that’s how champions behave.

I heard a speaker this week, Brad McCoy, father of legendary University of Texas and now Cleveland Browns’ quarterback Colt McCoy, speak about the importance of having passion and determination in life. It’s impossible to reach our dreams, he said, unless we have passion for what we’re doing and a willingness to go the distance to achieve our goals.

That passion is evident in these students who spend hours making sure they’re always giving their best. They’ve found a place to plug into the community, and the entire school is better because of these individuals.

So often in school, children become lost in the system. Either they feel as if they don’t fit in, they have a difficult time with routines or they’re overwhelmed with homework and the amount of class work required.

Schools are, after all, institutions where the primary directive is to learn – how to write a research paper, how to use the Pythagorean theory or how a chemical reaction works.

But schools are also places where young people learn that anything worth having means working extra hard for it and opportunities abound in our schools.

Passion is what separates people from those who sit back and let life pass them by and those who get up and actively engage in what life has to offer.

And for those who participate in the heat of the summer, after school or on Saturdays when they could be home playing video games or taking a nap, you’re learning an important, life-long lesson – anything is possible when you have a passionate determination to join the game.

This column was originally published in The Fort Bend Herald.