Legendary: Toms River North enters the Shore Conference pantheon with third straight state championship

EAST RUTHERFORD — The gravity of the accomplishment had yet to sink in for Toms River North’s players, but being well-versed in the history of Shore Conference football, head coach Dave Oizerowitz fully understood the rarefied air his program had just entered.

“What we’ve done is difficult, and maybe somebody else eventually does it, or nobody does,” Oizerowitz said. “We’ll let everybody else try to figure out how good we are compared to everybody else, but I’ll say this right now: nobody is better than us this year and our run in the modern era is unprecedented. I think we answered every question about that.”

Toms River North put itself on the Mount Rushmore of Shore Conference teams on Friday afternoon at MetLife Stadium with an emphatic 41-14 victory over Union City in the NJSIAA Group 5 state championship game, competing a perfect 14-0 season to cap one of the greatest three-year runs in Shore Conference history.

Toms River North’s 27-point wipeout of an 11-win Union City team gave the Mariners their third straight Group 5 state title in the first three seasons that New Jersey high school football teams have played down to true state champions. With many of the same players, North went 40-2 in three seasons and built the state’s longest active winning streak at 19 games. They have won 15 straight playoff games and 39 consecutive games versus fellow public schools. They are officially a dynasty and in the pantheon of the Shore’s legendary teams.

Manasquan set the standard with five straight sectional titles and a 58-3 record from 1998 through 2002. The Middletown South teams featuring future NFL running back Knowshon Moreno made history between 2001 and 2005 with four straight sectional titles from 2003 to 2006, a Shore Conference-record 43-game winning streak, five titles in six seasons, and a 68-4 record. Rumson-Fair Haven won four straight titles and five in six years between 2013 and 2018. Brick (1981-83) and Asbury Park (2007-09) won three straight sectional titles and went 31-2 and 33-3, respectively, during those runs. The Jackson Memorial teams of 2000 and 2001 went 12-0 in back-to-back seasons and remain regarded as all-time teams. Hall of Fame head coach John Amabile went 22-0 with two sectional titles at Wall in 1982 and 1983 and then led Neptune to a 42-2 record and three titles in four years from 1995 through 1998.

Now we can add Toms River North to that list. In the debate over the greatest team of all-time they certainly benefited from the opportunity those aforementioned teams didn’t have with the ability to win an overall state championship, but there are no hypotheticals when discussing the Mariners. They are the only public school in state history to win three straight state championships, and they did it by winning challenging sectional tournaments before taking down a top-10 team in each of the three state finals. Their only losses during the last three seasons came in 2023 to Non-Public B champion Red Bank Catholic and to Non-Public A semifinalist Donovan Catholic.

“It’s truly something special,” senior quarterback T.J. Valerio said. “In 40 years from now we’ll all be looking back on this game and remembering how special it was for our town and our program. It’s what you can achieve when you put a good group of guys together who work hard.”

In 2022, Toms River North went 14-0 and won the inaugural Group 5 crown with a 28-7 win over Passaic Tech. They backed it up last season with a 12-2 record and a second straight state title by beating Passaic Tech again. The common denominator on those teams was an iconic 2024 graduating class led by two-time New Jersey Player of the Year Micah Ford at quarterback and featuring numerous All-Shore players. Teams around the Shore and the state may have exhaled with the assumption Toms River North would take a step back. Not even close.

What opposing schools could not have accounted for was the burning desire a close-knit class of 2025 had to put its own stamp on the program. Players like Jaelyne Matthews, Nasir Jackson, Cam Thomas, Hathem Hooranyi and Mordecai Ford (Micah’s younger brother) were contributors on the first two championship squads and now found themselves as the caretakers of a potential dynasty. And then there’s Valerio, who sat behind Ford for two seasons and stayed at Toms River North even though he could have started for almost every other Shore Conference school as an underclassman. On Friday, he completed 13 of 18 passes for 159 yards and four touchdowns and ran for 56 yards. In his only season as the starter, Valerio threw for 2,412 yards and 30 touchdowns and rushed for 835 yards and eight touchdowns for an undefeated team.

“This is something I dreamed of and prayed for when I was sitting on the bench freshman and sophomore years,” Valerio said. “I was waiting my turn and I knew I had one shot and I couldn’t miss. And we did it. We practiced as hard as we ever did throughout the season and we executed. This is the outcome when you have a great group of players and you believe in each other.”

Ford, Thomas, Jackson and others also delivered outstanding senior seasons to keep the machine running. When their time came, they seized the moment.

“We knew after last year with the class we graduated that it was going to be a significant challenge,” Oizerowitz said. “But we also knew the senior class we had coming up had never lost at any level. They tore apart the Shore Conference when they were freshmen and they stayed together. And they were hungry. We noticed in the summertime that this was a special group. They had chemistry and they were clicking, and we were insanely fast. As long as we were physical and coachable and could play through the peaks and valleys of the season, we had a chance to be something by the end of the year.”

“We were hungry from day one,” said Matthews, who is committed to Rutgers University as one of the nation’s top offensive line recruits. “Everything was Micah Ford this, Micah Ford that, he’s not there anymore. He’s one of the greatest players to ever come through Toms River North and we have great respect for him, but we had to show we have guys like T.J. Valerio,  Nasir Jackson, Mekai Morse, Cam Thomas, Mordecai Ford. The seniors have all played together since seventh grade and to end it together with a state championship is an amazing feeling.”

In the era of dominance by non-public schools that are able to draw kids from well beyond their immediate geographic area, Toms River North’s ability to keep nearly all of its top youth players speaks volumes about the winning culture Oizerowitz and his staff have forged during his tenure.

“I’m not a guy who’s going to beg you to play for us or to stay,” Oizerowitz said. “We’re going to coach you really hard and you might not like us too much, but when you get here you’re going to learn how to play within our system and we think you’re going to be a pretty good football player. The guys buy in. They want to win, and the guys who truly want to win, they accept that hard coaching and want to play for us.”

It could be decades before another Shore Conference football team wins three straight state championships. In the era of playing the additional two rounds to determine overall group state champions, Toms River North is the new standard for public schools statewide. And with plenty of talent and experience returning next season, the Mariners won’t be going away any time soon.

“Senior season, 14-0, state champs. It’s special,” Valerio said. “No matter where we go in life we’re all going to have the memory of winning this game. I’m sure it will sink in later. All I know is we play for each other, and that’s how we got it done.”