The time may come when Steven Lakalaka takes his turn in a leadership position.

For the moment, the freshman running back is a willing learner in the early stages of his college football career under the mentorship of Joey Iosefa, the most seasoned returnee to the Warriors backfield.

"He’s like my older brother," Lakalaka said. "He has a lot of experience, so he’s been teaching me the steps, and from there I have to take it and do my best with it."

Lakalaka has been following Iosefa’s lead in the running back rotation during spring training, moving up the depth chart to take repetitions with the second unit after spending his redshirt season on the scout team last fall.

"He’s pretty smooth, he’s going to be a big help for us with his running skills," Iosefa said. "He’s smart, always asks questions. That’s the kind of person he is, he wants to learn."

Working against the starting defense as a scout team running back in practice gave Lakalaka an idea of the uptick in tempo in making the transition from high school to college. The adjustment process continues this spring as he works toward establishing a role in the offense.

"My main goal was just to focus on school and academics, and secondly just getting used to the speed, getting used to the plays," Lakalaka said. "It’s a lot different than high school, so I just have to get my mind right and obviously my body right as well."

Lakalaka, a first-team all-state running back his junior and senior seasons at Punahou, said he gained 10 pounds after arriving at UH. He’s since lost it and is working on trimming down further while picking up speed.

"He’s a guy that’s blessed with good vision and good body balance," running backs coach Chris Wiesehan said. "We just have to shed the sand he’s carrying right now and he’ll be a more explosive back. That’s our goal with him.

"He’s very good above the neck, he’s got a great attention to detail and has a good work ethic."

While he’s worked to lose a few pounds, Lakalaka — listed on the spring roster at 5 feet 10, 225 pounds — said he added some strength in his preparation for the spring, "but I can get stronger," he said.

"I’ve just been getting mental reps, getting my lifts in, eating right. Everything has to go right into place and I’ll have to do the same thing in the summer and work harder," Lakalaka said.

Lakalaka is finding his place in a UH system that bears similarities to the offense he thrived in at Punahou, where he rushed for 1,154 yards and 12 touchdowns as a senior in 2011. As for the biggest difference so far, "everything’s a lot faster," he said.

Wiesehan said having Iosefa to help guide Lakalaka, as well as the rest of a relatively young group of backs, has aided in his development so far.

"Joey’s a great mentor and the thing with Joey is he’s so unselfish," Wiesehan said. "You see guys when the competition is on kind of tighten up and Joey’s not like that.

"He’s a positive energy guy. With his work ethic and the way he plays, people gravitate to him. Now that he’s becoming more vocal, he’s more comfortable as a leader. It’s a neat thing to see a young man develop in those facets."

Iosefa was second on the team in carries and yards last season and doesn’t mind sharing insights while taking on a more vocal role within the group.

"I have to do my best to help them out a little bit with the scheme we’re running, all the reads," Iosefa said. "It helps me to compete with them. It’s a good competition with the running backs, at the same time we’re helping each other out.

"We have a lot of young guys coming in and you try to step up and help them out and it’s going to make us better as a football team."