Back Returns to Rugged Style

It was rush hour for Setefano Malieitulua last week, and not simply because he had to get from his home in Pacoima to the Notre Dame High campus in Sherman Oaks.

Gabe Macias, the starting center at Notre Dame and a teammate of Malieitulua, picked up the running back at his house and motored off to school. The conversation quickly turned, as usual, to football.

There had been no fast times at Notre Dame High, which started the season 0-2.

“Don’t you just hate losing?” Macias asked rhetorically.

Malieitulua nodded, his jaw set.

“I’m tired of it,” Malieitulua said. “I’m gonna do whatever a man has to do.”

In a 35-16 victory over St. Francis on Friday, Malieitulua’s season statistics went from stunted to full-blown maturity. On the first play from scrimmage, he turned a routine sweep into a 67-yard touchdown. It was the first of three scoring runs for Malieitulua, a 5-foot-10, 175-pound tailback, who finished with 214 yards in 18 carries and caught one pass for 21 yards.

Malieitulua had gained 112 yards in Notre Dame’s first two games and wasn’t coming close to the form he displayed as a junior, when he gained 652 yards, averaged 7.3 yards a carry and was an All-San Fernando Valley League selection. The coaching staff, in fact, emphasized during practice last week that he needed to be more, well, macho .

Malieitulua had been skittish when he hit the hole. He needed to hit the gas, not the brakes.

“We told him to run into the tacklers rather than trying to elude them,” Coach Kevin Rooney said. “We worked on him all week. He’d normally been a very aggressive runner, and he turned it around.”

And turned some heads.

“I don’t know who that was in that uniform Friday night,” Macias said. “I think he just got tired of losing.”

It all came back to Malieitulua pretty fast. Last season, he started in the same backfield as tailback Errol Small, now a redshirt at USC. He spent much of his time putting his shoulder to the grindstone, otherwise known as blocking.

“I’d really never hit anybody until last year,” said Malieitulua, a cousin of former Carson High quarterback George Malauulu, now at Arizona, and of former NFL defensive tackle Manu Tuiasosopo. “I was glad I did learn to block for (Small) last year, because I learned what I had to do.”

And he learned what he did best. Small is an elusive runner, able to dodge defenders with deft dekes. Once Malieitulua stopped trying to impersonate his predecessor at tailback, things returned to normal. This Small change paid big dividends.

Malieitulua (pronounced mal-EE-uh-EE-too-LOO-uh) said he had to put it in reverse before he hit fifth gear, however.

“I wasn’t running too good against Lynwood and Canyon,” he said, referring to Notre Dame’s losses. “Then I watched last year’s Canyon film. It was about, oh, four times different.”

Between the game film, the coaching staff and Macias, Malieitulua started to get the point. Time to put the hammer down.

“The first two games, he was kind of tentative and wasn’t exploding through the holes like he was last year,” receiver Vinnie Orlando said. “I guess since it was his senior year, he wanted everything to be perfect.”

The contrast was stark. Macias, who said he has known Malieitulua since second grade, suspected his friend had gone from a puncher to a dancer.

“I kept waiting for him to drop his shoulder and hit the guy,” Macias said. “I finally told him, ‘Hit them first. It’s hit or be hit.’ ”

Said Malieitulua: “They finally said, ‘If you want to get some decent yardage, follow the line, put your head down and knock some people out.’ ”

He promised that aggression would hereafter be his trademark.

“I guess I’m still used to being a fullback,” he said. “No more dancing around, though. It’s gonna be more run and hit, run and hit.”

Morning commuters, beware.