CCHS participates in Illinois High School Association athletics and is a member of Illini Prairie Conference.

CCHS has roots in St. Mary's School, built at a cost of $26,000[nb 3][30] by Holy Trinity Parish in 1884 during the pastorate of Michael Weldon.

[7]: 152  The building was located at the northeast corner of the intersection of Locust and Center Streets in Bloomington, Illinois.

[10] Sinsinawa Dominican sisters served as faculty at St. Mary's and subsequently at Trinity High School,[10][7] teaching nearly all classes until the 1950s.

[7]: 207  With the student body growing,[32] land for a separate high school building next to Holy Trinity Church at 712 North Center Street[33] was purchased from the Dominican sisters in summer 1922 for $25,000.

[nb 4][7]: 201  However, due to the poor health of pastor Michael Weldon, construction was postponed until after his death[7]: 207  The cornerstone of the school building was laid on 25 September 1927.

[7]: 223  Costing $285,000,[nb 5] the building was completed on 3 September 1928 and opened one week later as Trinity High School.

[37][38][39] In compliance with a diocesan directive, Central Catholic implemented mandatory hair sample drug testing of students beginning in 2000.

[35][44] Church officials began discussing sites for a new school building in 1996, initially considering a west side location in the former Chicago & Alton railroad yards.

[44][47] That July, the pastors' board announced fifteen acres of Deneen family farmland in east Bloomington were reserved for a new school building.

[53] In June and July 2004, the Center Street school building was razed[54] and in the following year Bill Hundman Memorial Field was completed.

[55] As $2,000,000[nb 9] in financial pledges for construction of the new school building were left unfulfilled, capital campaigns at the four regional Catholic parishes were started in 2011 to pay off the remaining debt.

[57] A 2013 upgrade installed school-wide wireless internet access[58] in conjunction with a new bring your own device program.

[15] In recent years, enrollment at the school has dropped, attributed in part to the diminished presence of State Farm Insurance in the area.

[10] Central Catholic High School is located on a 15-acre site[62] at 1201 Airport Road in Bloomington, Illinois.

On-campus dual credit introductory courses in psychology and sociology are available to juniors and seniors in partnership with Heartland Community College.

[1] The CCHS school year generally runs from late-August to late-May and is divided into two eighteen-week semesters and four nine-week quarters.

[74][75][76] During National Catholic Schools Week, teams of CCHS students compete against each other in a school-wide Olympic-style tournament.

[78][79] Central Catholic has around thirty student activities, clubs, and organizations in addition to sports teams.

[5] Baseball, basketball, cross country, football, golf, soccer, swimming and diving, tennis and track and field are currently offered boys' sports.

Basketball, cross country, golf, soccer, softball, tennis, track and field, and volleyball are the currently offered girls' sports.

[5] Before the IHSA allowed private schools to participate in 1941, the boys' basketball team won State Catholic Tournament championships under Bennett in 1927 and 1928 and placed second in the three years following.

The council voted with the understanding the current football practice field on land owned by the Central Illinois Regional Airport was in a Federal Aviation Agency restricted flight path zone and the school would have to move to another location in 2015.

CCHS agreed to spend at least $20,000 to improve the land, pay an annual rent of $1,700, and to maintain, mow, and clean the field.

[84] After the vote, alderman Joni Painter discovered from the school website that Fruin was a member of the CCHS Board of Trustees, an interest not previously disclosed.

[87] Council members also learned CCHS could renew the lease for its current practice field for up to another fifteen years.

[88] Mayor Tari Renner refused to sign-off on the approval pending an attorney general opinion on whether any conflict of interest law or ordinance was violated.

Fruin stated he would defer to the attorney general and that he did not believe there was a conflict of interest because trustees serve only an advisory role.

[89] A Pantagraph editorial later suggested several other potential conflicts of interest: the Deneen family - who donated land for the new school building - were stakeholders in the development firm from which the land would be purchased, Fruin's real estate agency - Coldwell Banker - was to oversee the transaction though he would have no role, and CCHS football coach Mike Moews is the brother of city parks superintendent Bobby Moews.

The city council continued discussions of how to allocate the money while Brady formed a committee headed by former Bloomington mayor Jesse Smart to determine how the grant should be used.