Despite Tough Start To The Season, Columbia’s ‘Character Win’ Over Pequea Valley Provides Added Boost As Crimson Tide Hope To Continue ‘Turning The Corner’
Written by: Andy Herr on December 17, 2025
In years past, this matchup probably would’ve been glossed over without much in the way of fanfare. Not that it was anyone’s inherited fault, mind you.
Short of relitigating all the intricate details when it comes to detailing this matchup – this game within the series particular – let’s just cut to the chase and say that Columbia has largely dominated the series against Pequea Valley in recent memory, but at especially when the game is at their home confines, high atop Columbia’s fabled hill campus.
Again, not that it should be viewed as some sort of slight to the PV Braves of course.
As you likely recall, Columbia has been one of the L-L League’s most foremost stalwarts over the last few seasons, making competing for district titles and state tournament runs feel like the norm and not the exception. Well, that, and the fact there is arguably no venue tougher and more arduous to the opposition than that of Columbia’s Kreiser Gymnasium of course.
Suffice to say, when the outcome usually seemed to be a foregone formality, that’s probably why this game might not have necessarily stuck out previously on any given night. This year though, while Pequea Valley’s trip to Columbia was also lodged right in the middle of a fairly busy night of section play around the league yet again on Tuesday evening, while there’s really no scientific formula available to determine just how appetizing this year’s version of the matchup might have been to the collective masses, let’s be perfectly frank and say that assuming this game’s eventual outcome would look all too familiar of those matchups of old would be a gross miscalculation.
Part of the reason? Pequea Valley themselves.
Coming into their Tuesday night test at Columbia’s famed house, the Braves were in the midst of one of their greatest starts to a campaign in what feels like quite a while. A 4-1 overall record, including a statement road win against Section Two’s Garden Spot right out the gate certainly catches everyone’s attention. That, along with winning your other three triumphs by an average of 21 points in victory, not the least of which includes an emphatic 62-29 takedown on the road at fellow Section Four foe Northern Lebanon last time out will certainly garner everyone’s attention too, no doubt. So yeah, plenty of reasoning available as to believing why this year might be different for the PV contingent stemmed both from the micro as well as the macro.
For Columbia meanwhile, the Tide were just looking for anything to break their way.
Even taking last year’s 2-19 record aside for the moment, the start of the Crimson Tide’s 2025-26 ride as well might have felt eerily similar when you consider that Columbia came into Tuesday evening owning an 0-3 overall mark, all of which were defeats that came by an average margin of defeat to the tune of nearly 36 points.
But if you think that type of showing is in any way truly indictive of the Columbia program to where they will simply lay down and continue suffering that same fate for the remainder of the year without bowing up with pride, you clearly don’t understand the level of collective investment everyone in that town has for its team – both from those in uniform and those who pay their hard-earned money at the ticket gate.
So yeah. What better way to try and make amends for a tough start to this season than by coming back to a familiar spot to play your first home game of the season where the folks will likely give you an added boost of juice to try and power through.
And as it turns out, for as much as things change, the more things stay the same. That’s a familiar storyline – and fate — that both Pequea Valley and Columbia learned first-hand by the end of the night. Yes, even regardless of what the circumstances might have been coming in.
Back and forth. That’s largely what would describe the opening eight minutes between these two divisional foes when looking for a prevailing theme.
Sure, while Columbia’s Chase Houck and Rome Elliott would take their turns at bombing in a pair of triples amongst themselves to give the homestanding Tide a 6-4 cushion with a tick inside the first half of the first quarter already having been expired, a Pequea Valley-engineered charge in response, capped off by a put-back bucket at the cup tallied by Nolan Stoltzfus, made it a 10-8 Braves’ advantage with 2:27 left in the first.
But aside from that, Pequea Valley’s Owen Fisher was a tour de force inside the game’s first act.
Even taking aside his pair of buckets chipped in late to conclude the first quarter scoring — buckets which allowed PV to take a 14-10 lead with them into the second quarter — the Braves’ senior wing had essentially outscored the entire Columbia ensemble all by his lonesome considering his 8-point first quarter showing to help give a much-needed jolt to aid in the Pequea Valley effort.
In the second, these two teams simply refused to quit one another once more.
While Houck would pepper in his second trifecta of the first half to trim the Braves’ lead down to a penny at 16-15, a tough take to the rack by way of Columbia sophomore guard, Kamrai Nichols, awarded the lead over to the home side, 17-16, with 4:15 left to play before the half. And not to bury the lede even further here, but Kreiser Gym was in all its glory with Columbia playing with what essentially felt like eight or nine players out on the court considering the home atmosphere contributing to the Tide’s ability to punch back time after time on Tuesday night.
Even still, to their credit, Pequea Valley refused to budge.
For proof of that, look no further than a personal 5-0 salvo generated via the handiwork of PV junior guard, Elijah Slabaugh, as Slabaugh’s triple and later bunny inside made it a 23-21 Pequea Valley lead before the final minute would later bleed away with both teams remaining at an exact stalemate, 23-23, once the squads retired to their respective dressing rooms for the halftime intermission.
By this point, it’d be fair to say that the first few minutes of the third quarter would prove vital provided that either club would be able to muster up any sort of momentum to perhaps run away and hide with this one outcome.
Perhaps no one knew that better than Columbia’s Kareem Nichols though as the Tide’s 5’11 junior guard quite literally stole the third quarter inbounds pass away from Pequea Valley and followed that up with a bucket in transition to put the Tide up by a deuce a mere few seconds into action for an immediate and abrupt turn in vibes. Speaking of Nichols, even taking that momentum-altering play aside for just a second, his countless, critical positive plays littered all throughout Tuesday’s contest were nothing if not instrumental in this eventual verdict. For his troubles, Nichols shared team-high scoring honors on the night alongside his backcourt running mate, Marty Baker, as the Tide sophomore and junior netted a 10-point showing respectively next to their names in the scorebook once the dust finally settled.
Yet again though, as they likely knew full well coming in, putting away this PV team wasn’t exactly an easy chore as far as Columbia had to be concerned.
Remember Owen Fisher from earlier? Columbia likely won’t have trouble recalling him – even aside from the Pequea Valley senior never once coming out of the game to sit for a breather – as a pair of Fisher buckets inside the waning stages of the third frame that came sandwiched around a Nickolas Boyer curl cut en route to the hoop for Columbia helped to vault PV out to a 37-35 advantage prior to entering the final stanza. And if you’re wondering, yes, Fisher would indeed capture the game-high scoring title at the end of 32 minutes by virtue of his 19-point showing here against Columbia.
Finally, in the final period, with justly deserved credit distributed out to their home fans, the Tide’s last surge would prove to be the one that would ultimately take Pequea Valley under water for good.
In terms of the specifics regarding the lead that Columbia would never surrender for the rest of the final jaunt home towards the final buzzer, those honors would be bestowed upon Chase Houck as the Columbia sophomore sniper tallied his third and final 3-ball of the contest, this one making it a 40-39 Tide buffer with 5:20 left to play.
From there, remembering the key plays that Kareem Nichols would be the author of all throughout the game at-large, consider his offensive rebound and stick-back with 3:40 to go here that then upped the Columbia lead out to a 42-39 count.
Lastly, recall the name Marty Baker from earlier as well? If not, consider his bucket and then subsequent dish to Rome Elliott in back-to-back fashion inside the game’s final minute, a pair of hoops which awarded Columbia their largest lead of the night at the most critical of junctures as the Tide were seen enjoying the spoils of a 46-41 lead with inside of a minute now outstanding.
And to Nolan Stoltzfus’ credit, while he would sink an NBA-range triple in transition for PV which shrunk the Columbia lead back down to a deuce at 46-44 with 3.6 seconds remaining, a pair of game-saving freebies tallied at the charity stripe by way of Nichols ended up sealing the deal for good as Columbia was able to not just get its first win, not just get its first section win, but perhaps turn a proverbial corner for the potential upside this program looking towards the future with such a young roster currently learning the ropes on the fly and in live-time.
“We’re better than our average margin of defeat will show,” Columbia second-year head man, Elijah Cooper, offered up afterwards following the successful verdict Tuesday when first asked about that aforementioned 30-plus average point differential coming into this one. “The game against (York) Suburban, we had nine guys out. We’re still in culture-building mode here. We have two juniors and one senior,” Cooper continued. “We have 18 guys here, but 15 of them are freshmen and sophomores. We’re just trying to get them to understand the commitment level that it takes at this (varsity) level to be successful. That’s really what we’re focused on right now. We had to bite a bullet a little bit in that first game (against York Suburban), but we came back and played Steel-High tough til the end. Lancaster Mennonite is just an experienced and veteran team. I doubt think we necessarily played really well in that game, but even at our best, that’s probably going to be tough to win in their house,” he acknowledged of his team’s first three outings.
“We had a tough schedule to start out, but we were also confident that we were better than what our scores would indicate,” Cooper said without hesitation. “It was a character win. We had to increase the energy and intensity that we play with. It took us a little bit, but we got there tonight.”
Certainly helps playing inside the conference’s foremost house of horrors for the opposition, no?
“Man, the people in the stands here just put a battery pack in our guys’ back,” Cooper said praising the home fans who undeniably helped will their favorite team over the finish line against Pequea Valley. “You can hear it in how (the fans) cheer and how passionate they are about the game. You can hear how bad they want it for (the players). It’s almost like you don’t have a choice than to be as passionate as the fans are,” he continued. “Energy is transferable. Whether it’s from a crowd, from the bench, from the coaches, it’s all transferable. The energy that everyone brings to the game translates to what happens out there on the court. Our crowd has done an incredible job of that for who knows however long.”
“It’d be really easy for them not to show up,” Cooper added of the always-present fan support waiting in the bleachers. “We were 2-19 last year, 0-3 this year. It’d be very easy to say, ‘Why bother?’ But Columbia doesn’t care about that. That’s why I absolutely love this place,” he remarked. “It’s truly one of a kind.”
Now, for the team – and the town – it’s time to keep this train moving down the tracks in a positive direction. The head coach is fully aware of maintaining such a mindset.
“What I told (the team) in the locker room is, ‘This is just the beginning of us turning the corner,’” Cooper then shared of the postgame message. “This can’t be a case of us thinking we’ve done something or won something. Yeah, be happy and enjoy (the victory) tonight, but then it’s right back to work when we come in tomorrow to get ready for Northern Lebanon on Friday. You never get too high, never get too low, and you just have to stay the course.”
“You are what you repeatedly do,” Cooper said in closing. “What we do day in and day out is going to determine how our season goes. That’s the messaging that we’re trying to get across.”
As far Tuesday was most concerned, consider that message to be received. Loud and clear.
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