Three slow starts have added up to, well, a slow start to the football season for the Flathead Braves, who will try to get going Friday against a very solid Butte High squad.

Both Kalispell teams are in action, with Glacier headed to Missoula for a battle with fellow unbeaten Sentinel. The Braves (0-3) and Butte Bulldogs (2-1) kick off at 7 p.m. at Legends Stadium.

“We need to get going,” said first-year Flathead coach Alex Cummings, a long-time assistant who knows this is the third straight 0-3 start for the school. “We’ve started in a hole pretty much three weeks in a row.

“(Butte coach) Arie Grey has been a good friend of mine since I got in the coaching game, and any time you face one of his teams, you have to be ready to go and start fast.”

Butte has Jace Stenson at quarterback, though he’s split snaps with Kellen Leary. Gavin Vetter has the Bulldogs’ lone rushing touchdown; Cameron Gurnsey, Dylan Snyder and Jonas Sherman have two touchdown catches each.

Gurnsey, son of former Griz standout Scott Gurnsey, leads Class AA with 27 catches and 402 yards.

“He’s doing a nice job for them,” Cummings said. “Which I figured, shoot. Genetics, man.

“That Snyder kid, he’s having a great year too. He’s about 6-foot-2 and playing defensive end as well.”

Cummings singled out linebacker Keegen Muffich as a leader of Butte’s defense; he has one more tackle than the 34 backer Chase Youso has for Flathead. Zach Tierney is a very good two-way lineman for the Bulldogs.

Cummings took encouragement from certain aspects of Flathead’s 57-0 loss at Helena Capital last week, noting that Nate Prieto had a pair of pass breakups at corner and Trevor Burke has done well in the defensive backfield.

“Kaden Henshaw had some nice runs last week,” Cummings added. “See that film was good. There were not a lot of things I was happy about, but our kids played very hard. It’s hard to see the positives at times, but that being said there are a lot of sophomores playing a lot of varsity football. That’s a positive for us down the road.”

Glacier at Sentinel

The Wolfpack has gone 3-0 and looked good doing it, but there is something coach Grady Bennett doesn’t like.

“We had one turnover in Game 1, two in Game 2 and three turnovers in Game 3,” Bennett said. “That was the first thing we talked about with the kids on Monday. We can’t continue that trend or we will not be successful Friday night.”

Sentinel, 2-0 after having its crosstown battle with Hellgate canceled last week, lost both its quarterbacks from its 2020 championship season. Zac Crews takes over as a dual-threat.

“He’s their best athlete, best football player, best quarterback,” Bennett said. “He’s just so talented and competitive and tough. They’re going to run him a lot and he’s going to be tough to stop.”

Linebackers Wyatt Thomason (17 tackles) and Royce Conklin (15) have led the defense in the early going. Jake Turner has two interceptions; Kash Goicoechea has a pick, a forced fumble and two fumble recoveries.

Quarterback Gage Sliter and running back Jake Rendina have made Glacier’s offense equally imposing, and four Wolfpack receivers rank in the Western AA’s top 12.

“Our young offensive line is coming along,” Bennett noted. “A lot of that is because of senior center Nick Stoick. He’s undersized but just great. He and (senior) Colton Schmidt are undersized, but just doing such a good job playing with two sophomores and a freshman, keeping them organized and confident. Gage hasn’t been touched much. If we can keep that up, that would be great.”