Boys basketball coach Eric Behrens will coach his last game as an Eagle this March.  

Behrens has been an incredibly successful coach for the Eagles, amassing 381 wins and 79 losses during his time at Central, winning an absurd 79.2 percent of his games.  Behrens won seven Class A state titles as head coach, completing an astonishing four peat from 2009-2013. Behrens’ Eagles were only the second team ever to accomplish this feat. Over his tenure, Behrens coached 15 Division I basketball recruits.  

“I mean, I’ve been here for two decades, I have so many memories,” Behrens says. “It’s mostly about relationships with people. Former players, their families, the people that have been around the program all these years.”  

Behrens is taking on the role of athletic director at Westview High School, one of the two new high schools that Omaha Public Schools is opening for the 2022-2023 school year. Behrens says it is not often one gets the opportunity to completely build the athletic culture at a school. 

“You’re just building the sports culture from the ground up. You’re able to build an athletic department, every coach you hire is gonna be the first girls cross-country coach, first football coach, first track coach,” he said. “Everyone you hire is going to put their stamp on their program right away and establish a culture in how they want things done and as an athletic department as a whole we get to do that as well, it’s an exciting opportunity.”  

Behrens says when looking for coaches, he focuses on finding people who focus on the whole student and not just the athlete.  

“[I want] people who are enthusiastic, people who are student-centered, they want to treat their student athletes the right way, but they also have a competitive spirit where they want to try and build successful programs that win games,” he mentions. 

Before the 2014 season, Behrens left Central to coach at the college level at Peru State. Behrens returned back to Central for the 2017 season after three years. 

The Eagles are currently ranked fourth in the state with a 13-3 record heading into the final stretch of the season.  

“We’re just taking it one game, one weekend at a time and trying to just get better in practice,” he says. 

After over a decade at Central, Behrens explains that what mattered most to him were the people surrounding the program. 

“It’s really not as much winning and losing games as it is about building relationships with people.”