2024 Sea Breeze Ford Football Most Valuable Player: St. John Vianney’s Abdul Turay

St. John Vianney’s Abdul Turay was a prime candidate for a breakout season entering the 2024 school year. As a part-time starter as a freshman, he ran for just under 700 yards and scored five touchdowns on an average of 7.5 yards per carry. It was easy to tell he had a bright future.

Doubling those numbers would have made for a great sophomore season, but Turay did much more than that with one of the best seasons by a running back in Shore Conference history.

Turay began the season with 148 yards and three touchdowns in a win over Carteret. That would end up being one of his lowest totals of the season. Over the next 12 weeks he rewrote the St. John Vianney record book with a school single-season record and state-leading 2,517 yards rushing and 37 touchdowns on an average of 8.5 yards per carry. He is just the fifth player in Shore Conference history to rush for 2,500 yards in a season, joining Freehold’s Ashante Worthy (2,860 in 2017), Manalapan’s Naim Mayfield (2,681 in 2017), Long Branch’s Dahmiere Willis (2,589 in 2014) and Pinelands’ Matt McClain (2,544 in 2010)

Easily overlooked was his excellent play on defense. He was one of the top safeties in the Shore and finished with 81 tackles, 4 sacks, and 13 tackles for loss. He powered a new-look St. John Vianney squad under first-year head coach Bobby Acosta to a 9-4 record and the program’s first trip to a state semifinal since 2015.

Turay was the best all-around player in the Shore this season and is our selection as the 2024 Shore Sports Insider Most Valuable Player.

“I saw the highlights of what he did as a freshman and I sent his clips to Syracuse, Northern Illinois and Pitt and they offered him based off two runs they saw,” Acosta said. “He backed those up with what he did this year. He’s a 4.0 student and a high-character person who loves his teammates, and I think that’s a big reason why he had the season he had this year. If you look at my background I like to throw more than I run, but this year it was more power and more inside zone because of him. It was a really great year watching this kid grow.”

Turay followed his performance versus Carteret with 101 yards and three touchdowns on 11 carries in a win over Marlboro before shifting his season into high gear with 223 yards rushing and four touchdowns on 15 carries in a big 33-19 win over Holmdel. That kickstarted a stretch of three straight games with 200-plus yards and three or more touchdowns. He finished the season with eight games of 200 or more yards and nine games with three or more touchdowns. He was held under 100 yards just once in the Lancers’ loss to Middletown North, but that was more a product of the score and St. John Vianney needing to throw more. He ran for 91 yards and one touchdown on 11 carries, averaging 8.3 yards per attempt. He set a career-high for yards with 255 on 31 carries in a win over St. Joseph (Metuchen) and had a career-high five touchdown runs in a win over Manasquan. When the Lancers upset Red Bank Catholic in the NJSIAA Non-Public B playoffs, Turay rushed for 177 yards and two touchdowns.

It was a legendary season that is even more remarkable considering he is just a sophomore. The four players ahead of him on the Shore Conference’s single-season rushing list all accomplished their feats as seniors.

“He’s a powerful runner,” Acosta said. “People didn’t bring him down with the first tackle. He always broke tackles and also has great agility. He didn’t put the ball on the ground once this year even with the amount of carries he had. And if you watch him play, he always has a smile on his face.”

Acosta credited Turay’s major jump to a refining of his running technique as a member of St. John Vianney’s track and field team.

“We have a special track coach, coach Rich (Agnello), who has been coaching track at SJV for a long time,” Acosta said. “The first time Abdul didn’t have proper running mechanics but he stuck with track and started to see an improvement. This year in indoor track you can see how explosive he is now.”

Initially, Acosta was hesitant to use Turay on defense because he didn’t want to burn him out, but it was harder to keep him off the field given his ability to affect the game on that side of the ball.

“We ran an attacking style on defense and he was usually the first person to the ball,” Acosta said. “We were without one of our starting linebackers for one game and he stepped in and played there. He’s a very instinctive football player. He ran a kickoff back for a touchdown, he had a nose for the football on defense, and then offensively you watch him and you can see he’s definitely one of the best players in the state.”

Turay will enter his junior year with 3,208 yards rushing. The Shore Conference career record is 6,676 yards by Keyport’s Ken Cattouse. There’s a long way to go, but Turay would break the record by averaging 1,735 yards per season over the next two years.

“I’ve seen the best and I would put Abdul Turay right up there,” said Acosta, who has coached all over the country at the high school and college levels, including as the head coach at national power IMG Academy. “He would have started for me at IMG. He’s not rated yet, but he’s definitely a 4 or 5-star running back.”

“We want him to be one of the best running backs to come out of the state of New Jersey. He has to continue to grown athletically and with his football IQ, but this is a young man who calls me on Sundays with three plays he saw on film that we should try, and then we run them and they work. We want to see him take a bigger leadership role, but he was still one of our captains as a sophomore. He’s a special kid with a bright future. I think if we can keep this thing together we can definitely make a run at a state title with him.”

Turay’s 2024 season was one of the best a Shore Conference running back has ever produced, and it might be just the beginning of an all-time career.