Glacier’s Luke Bilau has made the most of a move from QB

There was a point not that long ago that Glacier tight end Luke Bilau was a signal-caller. He was tall, had the arm and played the position in junior high and his freshman year.

“We thought he would be the quarterback in this class,” Wolfpack coach Grady Bennett said.

Then came 2019, and JT Allen was the junior starter at QB for Glacier.

“We felt he was too talented of an athlete to play JV quarterback,” Bennett said.

That was that. “I’m a big body, and they wanted to use me somewhere else,” the 6-foot-2, 215-pound Bilau said this week, while Glacier prepared for a State AA semifinal game at Missoula Sentinel. “So ever since sophomore year I’ve played tight end.”

He’s done it well. That sophomore year he exploded on the scene, averaging 17 yards per catch. He had 41 of them, and that coupled with seven touchdowns made him second-team All-State.

Fast forward and Bilau has quietly — partly because injuries forced him out of four games last season — climbed into seventh in career yards at Glacier with 1,250. He’s a matchup problem, combining a big frame with precise route-running and a knack for the end zone (12 TDs on 87 career catches).

“Linebackers are probably the only problem,” Bilau said. “There are some pretty big backers in AA.”

Glacier is 8-3 this season, and on a bit of a revenge tour: The Wolfpack avenged a 20-17 regular-season loss at Butte with a 36-27 win at Naranche Stadium in a quarterfinal game last week.

“The first time we played Butte, down in Naranche, we hadn’t played that well on the road,” Bilau said. “And we get there and had a lot of penalties and errors, and we had a lot of young guys playing in a tough atmosphere.”

That was then.

“We cleaned up the errors, and really it came down to our offensive line,” Bilau said of last week’s win. “They showed they were a top-tier, AA offensive line that can create some havoc.”

You’d have to include Bilau in that group; he estimates he stays in and blocks 60 percent of the time. Which makes sense.

“We have to give Jake Rendina the ball,” he said.

Rendina, the 230-pound running back, has piled up 1,340 yards and 24 touchdowns this season. He also has some history with Bilau: In junior high one was a scrambling QB for West Valley and the other (Rendina) was a linebacker at Kalispell Middle School. They met near the goal line.

“Right then I knew I wanted to be his teammate,” Bilau said.

Linebackers can be a problem. The collisions haven’t exactly stopped, either.

“There’s been a few times when I’ll be leading him through the hole and juet just runs right over me,” Bilau said. “But I usually get a pretty good lane for him and he does what he does.”

Bennett noted that with JT Allen graduating and heading to Rocky Mountain College, the quarterback spot was again open this season. Bilau started throwing again in the Pack’s offseason workouts, alongside Gage Sliter.

“We were seeing if we could have a package for both of them, or let them battle it out,” Bennett said. “But Gage really developed. Rather than lose a really good tight end, plus a guy that can play well at defensive end, now we have three positions taken care of. That worked out great for us.”

“Gage is probably one of the smartest QBs in the state,” Bilau said. “He just really knows how to read that defense. He knows where everybody goes. I’ll be like, ‘What was that play call?’ And he’ll say, ‘Just run a post, you’ll be good.’ “

“Such a tough job for a safety,” Bennett said. “You have to come up and support the run and keep an eye on the routes. If you miss a beat, all of a sudden you have a tight end running past you. And he really runs routes like a receiver. He understands getting out of the break and getting separation. He’s done a really good job.”

Bilau has quite a few Frontier Conference schools after him, and has heard from the Cats and Griz. He is leaning toward studying business at Montana Tech, but first things first: Defending champion Sentinel with its 19-game winning streak awaits. The Spartans and Wolfpack tussled on Sept. 17, with Sentinel winning 29-21.

“I’d love to go to Missoula and see what we can do.” Bilau said.