Manasquan’s Ace Etienne Nominated for Award After Comeback from Injury

Manasquan tailback Achilles “Ace” Etienne was rumbling through the rain and mud on an outside zone play last Thanksgiving against rival Wall when a tackle in the first quarter brought a painful and abrupt end to a breakout season.

“I was in shock, so I didn’t know right away, but I tried to sit up,” Etienne said. “I looked down at my leg, and it was bent out of place.”

Etienne suffered a broken femur in his right leg in the final game of the 2024 season and was whisked away in an ambulance. He was unable to watch his teammates rally for a 13-7 upset win over the Crimson Knights that denied Wall a share of a division title.

The injury clouded the outlook for his senior year after he ran for 1,129 yards and 18 touchdowns in his first season as the starting tailback. Etienne was a Shore Sports Insider second-team All-Shore selection after averaging 8.4 yards per carry and finishing with six 100-yard rushing games, as well as a single-game school-record six touchdowns.

His doctors told him it may take four to eight months to rehab his injury.

He was back in three.

“He’s just different,” Manasquan head coach Jay Price said about Etienne. “I visited him at his house after it happened, and he said, ‘I’m running track this year.’ He had a noticeable limp in late January. I thought maybe he could still give it a shot, and then he started running track, and watching him doing the hurdles, it was insane.”

Etienne’s perseverance through the injury has resulted in him being nominated for the Youth Athlete of the Year in partnership with Sports Illustrated, the V Foundation, 3Brand and the Why Not You Foundation. Voting goes through Aug. 7, and the winner will be featured in a 3Brand ad in Sports Illustrated and take home $25,000.

“It just feels great to be able to be nominated for this, and to just get back out there on the football field,” Etienne said.

A Bad Break for Etienne

Etienne had never experienced a serious injury in his football career until the Thanksgiving game against Wall.

He said a tackler crawling on the ground hit him in his right leg. The collision broke his femur, also known as the thighbone, which is the strongest bone in the body, according to Mayo Clinic.

Despite the pain, Etienne had to practically be dragged out of there by emergency responders.

“I wanted to stay on the field, but I knew I just couldn’t, and that was the most frustrating part about it,” he said.

“He went from being in shock to trying to fight the ambulance guys to stay,” Price said. “He had the nurses put the stream of the game on TV in the hospital.”

Etienne was told it was possible he might not be able to return to athletics until possibly this summer.

“When they said that, I really wanted to push myself,” Etienne said.

Price said he’s broken his femur twice as an adult, and he figured there was no way Etienne’s self-imposed timeline could happen.

“I was wondering if we were even going to have him for this football season,” Price said.

Etienne was doing mobility and strengthening exercises for his leg three to four times a week in physical therapy. The distant timeline was shrinking fast.

“My teammates were all helping me throughout my experience to just keep going,” he said. “It meant the world to me.”

A Triumphant Return to the Track

Etienne’s diligent work resulted in him being cleared to run track in the spring of 2024, which required working through some fears.

“There definitely was some hesitance,” he said. “My leg was not in sync with the rest of my body, which threw me off at first when I was running.”

Etienne also specializes in the hurdles, which requires precise timing when running on two healthy legs, forget one that was snapped only months earlier.

Not only did he get back to running, he broke his own school record in the 110-meter hurdles at the NJSIAA Group 2 meet, finishing in 14.83 seconds. He had set the previous record as a sophomore.

“I was able to finally get my body back in sync fully,” Etienne said. “I surprised myself because I didn’t even think at one point I was going to make it out to run track, much less break my own record.”

Ready for Football Season

While Etienne experienced some scintillating moments on the track last spring, now comes the real test – returning to the football field.

Manasquan has not yet started contact drills, and scrimmages are still weeks away. Etienne has yet to get hit while running the ball on his repaired leg.

“At this point, it’s all mental,” he said. “I might just instinctively do stuff and not even realize I’m doing it to baby or protect that leg, but I’m going to have to break out of that habit.”

“It’s going to take that one good tackle, and for him to bounce up and realize that broken bones grow back stronger,” Price said.

Manasquan, a traditional Shore Conference power, is looking for a bounce back season after going 6-5 and missing the state playoffs last fall. The Warriors return Etienne and a host of young talent that saw significant minutes in the latter half of last season due to injuries to five two-way starters.

They also add quarterback Kyle Dow, who started for Donovan Catholic last season and will have to sit 30 days via the transfer rule. In addition, versatile senior Justice Morgan, who is Etienne’s cousin and the son of former Warriors superstar tailback Troy Morgan, transferred to Manasquan from Brick after finishing with 490 total yards and 5 touchdowns as a junior.

Not only is Etienne looking to boost the Warriors back to the playoffs, he also is trying to return to the recruiting radar. The injury came at the worst time as far as determining his future.

Price said all the programs that were looking at Etienne last season are taking a wait-and-see approach this fall.

“There was a lot of interest that kind of cooled off a little bit,” Price said. “They’re all saying, ‘Let’s see him play a game before we get back on his trail.’”

Etienne, who also is an honors student, has already shown that if you put a hurdle in his way, he will clear it.

“I’ve learned once the kid sets his mind to do something, you can’t knock him off that track,” Price said.

“I definitely want to push past everything I’ve gone through and be the best version of myself,” Etienne said.

Scott Stump is a freelance reporter, newsletter writer and editor who first started covering Shore Conference football in 1999 and has covered basketball, baseball and seemingly every other Shore Conference sport at some point. 

You can contact Scott at [email protected]