Alexander Brown sits cross-legged on a red, metal outdoor foldable chair at the edge of Marin Academy’s pool. Scattered in front of him are a combination of San Rafael High School’s Varsity and Junior Varsity Boys Water Polo teams. When Alex finishes his instructions, he allows them to start swimming. He then leans back, holding his hat, and sighs. It is currently 7:00 pm and as the fall season trickles in, the sun is already long gone. Alex holds a music career which he does during the day on top of his full-time job in healthcare technology. He finally finishes the day at the pool with SR’s water polo team.

Alex is wearing green Adidas, topped off with his T-shirt and a hat to block off the nonexistent sun. Once he looks up, his players have finished swimming. Alex stands up again, shifting his weight between one leg and the other. Splashing is heard throughout practice as his players scream and laugh in enjoyment as they engage him in their jokes. Despite his exhaustion, he still makes an effort to laugh with them.

Alex sighs again and gives them another swim set. The teams ignore him once more, so he repeats his instructions with a harsher tone. They push off the wall and swim. Even though he’s a sweet person, he knows when to put his foot down. He wants to have fun but also improve his players.

“One thing when you learn as a coach is that you have to repeat yourself… It’s like herding cats,” Alex says after laughing.

Bobby Seater, a senior at SRHS, remembers a time when Alex was coaching through a game. “In a game, he’s normally serious when something happens. He calls timeouts pretty strategically. When there’s a turnover and we’re all tired, he calls a time-out just when it’s chaotic so we can all slow down. He also usually gets up and yells at the [referee] about something. But even when he’s yelling, he still laughs a bunch.”

Gabriel Cabrales, captain of the Boys Varsity Water Polo team, adds, “Alex often gets yellow carded because he screams at the ref a lot. He would be like, ‘My player is getting f***ing punched in the face!’”

Cabrales would go on to emphasize that Alex is a caring coach. “There was this time that he told us that, in the first year of him coaching at SR, he got offers from like four different schools with a ton of money. But he declined them all. When asked why, he said that he saw a lot of potential and growth in us. And I think that really stuck with me.”

Cabrales remembers a funny moment during a game against Lick Wilmerding. On the back of LW’s Speedo suits prints the word “lick.” Amid SR’s winning lead, Alex calls a time-out. “In the middle of his pep talk, he says something like ‘Okay, listen. We are winning right now, but I swear to God! If we lose against a team named Lick, I will jump into this pool myself and make you guys swim laps until you die.”’ Cabrales pauses to laugh and continues, “He [Alex] was really adamant about us winning the game.”

Seater agrees, saying, “he’s also really fun to be around. He’s good at being your coach when he needs to be, but he’s also really good at being an enjoyable person. A lot of our team treats him as a friend sometimes.” Seater continues to reminisce on a moment with Alex during the Sierra Shootout, a water polo tournament. It was three hours before their game, and the SR Varsity guys spent the extra time at an arcade. “Alex bought us all the cards and let us play. We played the same Spongebob game over and over to win all the prizes from it. I think it makes it more enjoyable as a team.”

When asked about coaching water polo, Alex describes it as a way to connect deeper with his community.

Alexander Brown was born in Hong Kong, China in 1997, with his father working for Warner Brothers. Once he got a new job in Japan, Alex spent the remainder of his childhood in Tokyo. Suddenly, his dad opened a new coffee company in Southern California which opened up a pathway for him to move to Marin County. Despite a nomadic lifestyle, Alex was able to make a name for himself at a young age. His mother would put him into water polo when he was young, leading him to play Division 1 at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

However, “the collegiate student-athlete lifestyle didn’t work out,” Alex says as he remembers his times at UCSB. His career ended early and over the rest of his time in college, he “figured it was a good opportunity to take what [he] had learned” and teach it.

But people outside of SR would mainly know Alex as Al-x The Great.

Al-x The Great was always part of the school choir and musicals at a young age, and “[his] mother would always make sure [he] was constantly performing.”

With a set of confidence, he was introduced to rapping at his water polo teammates’ house. After “getting lost in all that,” he became a professional rapper with over 20 million streams on Spotify.

Alex finds inspiration from being at the beach. Living in Santa Barbara during his university days, he spent a lot of time surfing. This often came at the cost of his classes. “It’s hard because do you go to your morning class, or do you catch a wave?” He says with a bright sparkle in his eyes and a huge grin.

When making music, Alex thinks about two things. “What [he] has experienced, and what [he] aspires to experience. And with that, you are able to talk about whatever you want but still stay true to yourself.” Feeling like home, his upbeat, romantic songs consist of ocean ambiance on top of lyrics that reference being at the beach. Funnily enough, Alex’s laugh mimics that of a dolphin’s call.

He finds comfort in music, allowing it to fill the empty parts of his life. Demonstrating this, he crafts his stage name by taking out the “e” in his name and replacing it with a hyphen. He adds “the great” as a reference to Alexander the Great, “the greatest conqueror ever.”

Evan, a regular listener of Al-x The Great’s music, lives in Toronto, Canada. He came across Alex’s music playing overhead at a restaurant. He “loved the beachy and chill vibe, which made [him] start listening to [Alex’s] music. As Alex says, he’s the best rapper no one has heard of.”

However, Al-x The Great performs locally, and occasionally at concerts in Los Angeles. He recalls a time when he noticed his fans in the audience. “There were people in the front row seats who knew every single word of my songs. Being a small-ish artist, that has never happened before. At the end of the show, they asked for my autograph and we all had a good time.”

On top of coaching and his music career, his full-time job in healthcare leaves him no time for anything else. Therefore, making him the busiest person alive. Despite the major stress he deals with daily, he continues to laugh. Especially with the people around him. Therefore, he is able to leave a lasting legacy through the pursuits he genuinely enjoys. His mission is to not seek recognition, but rather to simply do the things he loves. In doing so, he naturally leaves behind a meaningful impact for those around him.

Alex hopes to continue coaching water polo and making music. Most importantly, he wants to “have fun.”