KALISPELL — The Braves have found their new head coach.
Longtime assistant Alex Cummings has been recommended to be the next head football coach at Kalispell Flathead High School, the school announced on Tuesday.
"Alex is looking forward to building the Flathead football program and moving it forward as they compete each and every week," Flathead athletic director Bryce Wilson said in a media release.
Cummings was chosen by the hiring committee out of seven candidates who applied for the job. Cummings replaces Matt Upham who resigned back in January after two years at the helm.
"I’m very humbled to be named the head football coach at Flathead High," Cummings told MTN Sports. "This has been a dream of mine since I was in grade school. I have had a lot of great mentors in my life to get to play for guys like Gary Ekegren and Matt Johnson at (Missoula) Big Sky to Mark and Kyle Samson at MSU-Northern and Jeff Thompson here at Flathead. To be able to get this opportunity to take over a program with over 100 years of tradition is not something I take lightly. I’m looking forward to getting to work with a great group of student-athletes, coaches and community members who love Flathead football as much as I do and I’m excited about the future of Flathead High football."
After advancing the Class AA state championship game in 2018, the Braves have gone 2-15 over the past two seasons.
Cummings originally hails from Missoula and is a 2009 Big Sky High School graduate where Ekegren was his head coach and Johnson, Big Sky's current head football coach, was the defensive coordinator. Cummings went on to play for Mark Samson at MSU-Northern from 2009-13 where he played on the offensive line, mostly at left guard. Cummings then student-taught at Big Sky and helped coach the Eagles in 2014 before taking a job at Flathead in 2015.
Cummings spent six seasons as an assistant football coach at Flathead, the first four as the offensive line coach under Kyle Samson and the last two as the assistant head coach under Upham.
