Six games into the season, the University of St. Thomas football team finally got the kind of quarterback play from sophomore Tak Tateoka that the Tommies were expecting when he burst onto the scene last season as a freshman.

The 6-foot-3, 207-pound Tateoka completed 16 of 21 passes for 122 yards and two touchdowns in the Tommies’ 39-32 win at Marist last Saturday. For his efforts, Tateoka, who also rushed for two touchdowns, was named offensive player of the week in the Pioneer Football League.

Tateoka started five games as a freshman before an injury cut short his season. He showed enough to emerge as the presumed starter this season, only to have an uneven training camp cloud the quarterback position.

Tateoka’s struggles carried over into the season, and he temporarily lost the starting job to freshman Michael Rostberg, with junior Amari Powell also in the mix. But the coaching staff believes Tateoka gives the team the best chance to win, and last Saturday’s performance is one everyone involved has been waiting for.

“What was really tearing me down was that I felt I was underperforming for my teammates,” Tateoka said of his struggles. “I really want to play for my teammates. I just really felt bad.”

The weight of the position was taking its toll.

“It’s — by far — the toughest position to play in the toughest sport to play,” St. Thomas head coach Glenn Caruso said. “To play it with an 18- or 19-year-old guy is tough. You have to do a really good job of keeping his world, his process, really well defined until he gets to the point where he can be his own Picasso.

“It would have been nice to say his freshman year provided him with that, but it also was cut short due to injury by five games.”

Some poor mechanics were part of the problem, Tateoka said, and he has been focused on not over-striding, which has led to his throws sailing high. His lack of success also led to a dip in confidence.

“I think I was just getting down on myself,” Tateoka said. “Coach Caruso talks about being stoic and staying level-headed. I felt like early on I was just in my own head. But I found a way out of that.”

Tateoka has turned to family members and a former high school coach for support through his struggles, but said he also has relied on Powell to help him navigate the ups and downs that come with playing quarterback.

“I talk to Amari a lot because he’s dealt with some of the same struggles I have,” Tateoka said. “We’ve both been all over the depth chart. He’s been a real blessing to have him in the quarterback room.

“He’s one of the first people I come to talk to when I come off the field. He gives me good feedback.”

Caruso believes a stoic approach serves all his players well, but particularly the quarterbacks.

“Tak is an emotional kid, and I love it,” he said, “but there’s a difference between having passion and playing with emotion. We have to be stoic enough to know that whatever happened on the prior play, the prior drive, the prior game, we can only take from it the knowledge.

“We can’t take from it the stress and the strains of our failures.”

The Tommies’ offense has been tweaked a bit to put an emphasis on shorter passes and getting the ball out of Tateoka’s hands quicker. But it also has been aided by the return to health of running backs Hope Adebayo and Gabe Abel. Caruso is hoping that that combination will keep Tateoka on a path to success.

“The Tak Tateoka who played here last year was a different human,” Caruso said. “He had been here for six weeks when he got his first start. He was so green that he probably didn’t know all the dangers and threats that were out there.

With the Tommies playing at Valparaiso on Saturday, Tateoka said he is thinking about making sure last week’s performance wasn’t an outlier.

“I was talking with coach about how we can stack weeks upon weeks,” he said. “We’re 2-0 in conference, but we’re just working to be 1-0 every week and to be consistent.”