Episode 11: 2013 Omaha Central High

In the mid-1980s a rich pipeline of basketball talent came out of Africa. Hakeem Olajuwon, Dikembe Motombo, and Manute Bol were the first wave of African stars.   More recent are Luol Deng,  Serge Ibaka,  Joel Embiid, and Pascal Siakam.

            And if you’re a basketball fan in Nebraska you might remember another African athlete.  His name was Akoy Agau, and from 2009 to 2013 he was Nebraska’s premier high school player.

              Akoy’s roots were in the Dinka tribe of South Sudan.  In the late 1990s his family fled a violent civil war.   After stops in Egypt and Maryland it came to Omaha in 2003.  There it found one of the largest South Sudanese expatriate communities in America.  And like all refugee families, it found economic and cultural struggle.

            In 2009 Akoy enrolled at Central High in downtown Omaha.  Central is Nebraska’s oldest high school, and its most economically and culturally diverse.   At 6 foot 8 inches, with a long wingspan, Akoy was a dream come true for Central coach Eric Behrens.

            Sure enough, with Akoy at center, the Central Eagles won state championships in the large-school division in 2010, 2011 and 2012.   As a sophomore and junior Akoy earned All-State honors.    With Akoy, Omaha Central was dominant in Nebraska.  And it was expected to win a fourth straight championship Akoy’s senior season. 

That was something that worried Eric Behrens. He worried about the weight of high expectations. And while Central was dominant in Nebraska, Behrens worried that his team wasn’t recognized nor respected on a national level. His solution to both concerns was to add a bold and creative wrinkle to his schedule.

Which is why, on February 9, 2013, a 6000-seat arena was sold out in Grand Island, a city of 48,000 in central Nebraska. The main event of the Heartland Hoops Classic pitted Omaha Central against Oak Hill Academy. Oak Hill, a private boarding school from southwest Virginia, was basketball royalty. In the previous 12 years it had produced 32 NBA players, and 55 D-1 college players,. In 2011-12 it had gone undefeated in 44 games and had won its eighth mythical national title.

Between the Omaha Central Eagles and national credibility stood the Oak Hill Academy Warriors. Above it all soared Akoy Agau, on his way to a permanent place in the Nebraska record book.

I tell Akoy Agau’s story in full in “Citizen Akoy: Basketball and the Making of a South Sudanese American”, University of Nebraska Press, 2019.

Thanks to Platte River Radio KKPR FM for its archived broadcast of the Central-Oak Hill game.

Photos:

above: Omaha Central 2013 Class A state champion

below:

1) Akoy Agau celebrates his fourth state championship with Omaha Central in 2013

2) Akoy Agau with his mother Adaw (far left), father Madut (far right), and three brothers and two sisters, after the Oak Hill game.

3) Coach Eric Behrens and Akoy Agau