In Game Worthy Of Championship Distinction, Ephrata Prevails Over Palmyra In Double Overtime Thriller To Claim Mountaineer Tip-Off Title As Mounts Notch ‘Incredible’ Victory

Written by: Andy Herr on December 7, 2025

Maybe it’s cliché and hokey. Maybe it’s not. Either way, the fact of the matter is that when it comes to first full week of the high school basketball season at the start of every December, there are championships to be won coming out of the weekend.

For some, winning a tip-off tourney title likely pales in comparison to the larger goals that a team hopes to achieve as we ramp up towards early spring.

That’s for some.

For others, heading the season started with a little bit of physical hardware likely goes an incredibly long way in setting up for the future. And aside from that, if the game itself feels like a heavyweight bout in and of itself, even better, right?

So, take those elements right there, throw it into a blender, and you’ll quickly get the end-result of what transpired on Saturday afternoon at Ephrata Middle School in the finale of the Mountaineer Tip-off Tournament. In fact, the outing was so great that all other games contested the rest of the season will now have an incredibly high bar to measure up with when the discussion shifts to Game of the Year consideration away from this battle royale held between Ephrata and Palmyra.

Fortunately, as far as those serving on hosting duties were most concerned on Saturday afternoon, the prolonged waiting til the final buzzer just made the conclusion of this wild affair all the more worth it.

But, more on that later.

Right of chute in this championship fight, if anyone wearing the white home jerseys had any sort of trepidation or fear of competing for an early season title, they certainly had a funny way of showing it.

Not the least came in the form of both Pharrell Whitfield and Carson Martin respectively, as the Mounts’ sophomore and junior tandem made it a 6-0 Ephrata cushion over the course of the first 2:13 to knock Palmyra back on their heels.

But Whitfield was just getting started. And that proved to be bad news for those in Cougars’ camp.

Without question, Ephrata’s wiry wing was a challenge for Palmyra to contain – especially in the first few minutes on Saturday – as Whitfield poured in another pair of triples to aid in the Mountaineers’ cause, the last of which made it a jaw-dropping 15-3 start in favor of Ephrata, all before the curtain finally fell on the first stanza with the Mounts not just holding Palmyra without a field goal throughout the entire first eight minutes, but building up a commanding 17-4 advantage in the process courtesy of Whitfield’s 3-ball triumvirate.

Simply put, when you are unable to net nary a bucket from the field over the course of an entire quarter, chances are rather high that your hole of a deficit will be nothing if not sizable.

However, not a moment too soon for Palmyra’s wishes, the Cougars would at long last get those elusive first points from somewhere other than the charity stripe once Palmyra 5’8 junior guard, Luke Johnson, capped off a critical first possession of the second quarter for the visitors from Lebanon County.

But the head of steam – quiet as it may have seemed – began gathering legs and momentum as the second quarter trudged along.

In fact, that once emphatic Ephrata lead of a baker’s dozen was later sliced all the way down to six, 19-13, in the aftermath of a pair of Cougars’ buckets chipped in by way of Tommy Stelman and Brady Kyper respectively. Even still, that Mounts’ lead would continue to get smaller in size and stature following a 1-2 trip back to the foul line by Stelman as the Palmyra senior combo guard not just helped to get his club back within reach come the halftime break at 20-17, but the Cougars’ staunch defensive effort –one that stymied Ephrata to just three points themselves inside the second frame – was the secret sauce at work.

So, following an opening sixteen minutes where both Ephrata and Palmyra took their shared turns at running extremely cold and extremely hot, all of that noise throughout the first half was tabled somewhat given the one-possession difference on the start of the third quarter ultimately rolled around on Saturday.

Then again, one of the biggest elephants left in the room all the same was the underlying fact that Palmyra – hard-charging as they may have been throughout the latter portion of the first half – had yet to even play with the lead up until that point.

And while the Cougars wouldn’t quite summit the mountain following a take to the cup authored by 5’9 senior guard, Julian Meley, it at the very least got the orange and black back on level-footing for the first time since the ball was tipped off at center court to begin the game, as Meley’s bucket knotted things at 20-20 with 1:50 having bled off the third quarter clock.

But as far as the Cougars’ summiting duties, those honors would be bestowed upon Palmyra 5’11 junior guard, Brady Kyper, as Kyper’s trifecta not just made it a 25-22 lead in Palmyra’s favor, it also forced Ephrata’s hand into calling timeout while experiencing the smaller end of the scoreboard for the first time all game long with 2:50 left in the third.

All told, while the Mounts would be able to add four more points to their third quarter score over the final couple minutes and change, Palmyra was nonetheless seen playing with their largest lead of the day, 30-26, as a deuce inside by 6’2 senior guard, Braydon Brown, helped to vault Palmyra into the final period with their most tangible bit of juice seen up until that juncture.

Here though, with the game hanging in the balance, turning to your veteran leaders figures to almost always be the most effective fail-safe in terms of getting out of dodge with a victory. Ironically though, that’s one of the things that Ephrata seemed to lack coming into this season considering that Grayson Shellhammer and Landon Schadt, quite the literally the Mounts’ only seniors returning to the roster following last season’s trip to the District 3-6A playoffs, both were largely kept under wraps by the Palmyra troops coming into the fourth.

But what a way to make up for lost time, eh?

To begin the fourth, with the situation already somewhat precarious from Ephrata’s perspective considering time and score teetering delicately towards being their enemy and not their friend, Shellhammer, Ephrata’s undisputed floor general, helped to calm the choppy waters by coming up with two straight critical buckets to get the Mounts back even at 31-31 with 3:30 remaining.

That said, even when things may have started looking rosier for Ephrata following the aforementioned efforts of Shellhammer, Palmyra would retaliate in kind by upping their cushion to what was yet again the largest such margin seen throughout the day at a four-point barrier, 36-32, following a 2-2 trip to the charity stripe finished off by Cougars’ 6’4 senior forward, Micah Warner, with exactly 90 seconds left.

Did we mention though that both Shellhammer and Schadt are critical pieces to help lead this relatively young Ephrata Mounts’ roster this season?

As if that couldn’t have been even more apparent, look no further than a fearless triple sunk by Schadt with what at the time felt as if the Mounts were dead to rights, slicing a large Palmyra lead considering time and score down to a much more modest 37-35 margin of separation with just 37.5 seconds left.

And if the seniors helped to set the table, here were the Mounts’ underclassmen on scene to then bring the goodies.

Case in point, a wide-open lane that opened up for Pharrell Whitfield that ended with the Ephrata sophomore tallying an easy bucket to pair nicely with his explosive start out of the chute, as the game-high scorer netted the two biggest of his 19-point afternoon at the office with just 8.8 seconds remaining in regulation.

Regulation of course being the operative word to use there as a final Palmyra possession resulted in not much fanfare – a turnover to be exact – as this 32-minute game of stark ebbs and flows found within it seemed fitting that an extra session, an overtime session, would still be required.

Once the overtime period began, neither team was able to generate any sort of tangible footing while working against the opposition.

In fact, had it not been for a dead-eye triple rained down by Ephrata junior guard, Luke Hurst, making it a 40-37 Mounts’ lead, nearly the entire first three minutes of the OT would have netted exactly zero points for either side as empty trips seemed to be the soup of the day.

Even still, precarious as the situation was for Palmyra while looking up at a 40-38 deficit with inside of 30 seconds may have seemed at the time, a literal game-saving steal and finish courtesy of Cougars’ senior guard, Luke Grumbein, not just tied things back up at 40-40, but it effectively vaulted the guests into a second overtime session as a last-chance Ephrata possession with 17.5 seconds remaining went by the wayside with a chance to win.

Suffice to say, with both clubs being nothing if not equal seeing as how a now an additional four-minute stanza would be necessary to try and find an eventual winner, if either team get any sort of separation, that would likely prove to the game’s golden ticket.

Would it come following a pair of Luke Johnson free throws that made it a 42-40 Palmyra lead with 3:02 left in double OT? No, considering how a hoop plus the harm down on the other end by way of Ephrata’s Eli Frain followed later, knotting things up again at 42-42 with 1:55 left now.

However, maybe it would come in the aftermath of a Grayson Shellhammer three-point play, making it a 45-42 Ephrata lead, with 1:28 then left to tick off. Alas for the Mounts, neither that would create a large enough dent on the scoreboard as a pair of free throws sunk by Tommy Stelman for the Cougars made it a 45-45 contest with 14.9 seconds remaining.

So, with this game now careening towards an almost inevitable third overtime, the ball was quite literally in Ephrata’s hands to end this game in walk-off fashion.

Enter Luke Hurst stage right for the Mounts right on cue.

Granted, while a total of seven points tallied throughout the day on Saturday might have placed Hurst third overall in terms of the Ephrata team-high scoring ledger against Palmyra, the junior’s flare for the dramatics couldn’t have been more evident. First, remember his 3-ball which helped to get the game out of its collective malaise of the first overtime to break the scoring seal? But here, Hurst saved his best for last.

That being a cold-blooded triple scored right in front of his team’s bench which promptly sent them into a collective tizzy, making it a 48-45 Ephrata lead with just 2.5 seconds left for Palmyra to try and pull one last rabbit out of their hat.

Instead, that headwear proved to be empty for the Cougars as Ephrata was able to hang on in the final seconds and be the last team standing inside the ring of this knockdown, drag-out fight to win the Mountaineer Tip-Off Tournament courtesy of their thrilling 48-45 double overtime triumph against a very game Palmyra crew.

Without question, there were plenty of heroes to be found at the conclusion of this one that undeniably helped Ephrata cross the proverbial finish line here and move their record out to a 2-0 mark. Not the least of was a young underclassman who didn’t let the magnitude of the situation at-hand get the best of him, especially one who began the game with a bang by tossing in three triples inside of the opening frame.

“It comes with a lot of trust,” Ephrata sophomore guard, Pharrell Whitfield, the game’s overall scoring champ by virtue of a 19-point outburst and first team all-tourney selection, said following his team’s latest triumph here on Saturday afternoon with momentum swings all over the place. “You have to trust your teammates and trust in yourself.”

“In the moment, it was a little big,” the Mounts’ sophomore, fresh off the JV ranks from a year ago, admitted of the stakes and emotion that came with this game so clearly up for grabs throughout. “But then I got to thinking, just ignored the crowd, and started playing my game…Yeah, it definitely felt like a championship that we won out there tonight.”

As for his head coach, after taking a moment to allow his overall heartrate to steady itself, no doubt, Matt Herbener tried his best to explain away a wild 40-minute game that saw his team come out on top.

“It was 17-3 at one point, then it was 20-17 at half,” the Mounts’ second-year coach said describing the shift in tone found just inside the first and second quarters alone that saw his team up big, then suddenly not so big. “This is an extremely inexperienced group coming into this year. Stuff like (late-game situations), you just can’t simulate that in practice. For us, to do that, in a game setting early on, to go out and actually win the game, that’s huge,” Herbener proudly remarked. “Sometimes, you go through games like that, and you lose. Yeah, maybe you can learn some lessons (in a loss), but it can be so freaking deflating,” he said with a laugh. “To go out and get a win like that is just incredible for these guys.”

And speaking of incredible, while everyone who saw the floor for the Mounts on Saturday chipped in no small way, some of these wide-eyed underclassmen who never flinched inside the crucible of a championship game to end their first week of varsity player were nothing if not invaluable. Pharrell Whitfield in particular.

“Pharrell is just special,” Herbener said when asked of his sophomore difference-maker. “Last year, we had Marqus Hardin who we could hand the ball to, and he’d go out and get us a bucket when we needed it. For Pharrell, with him being so young, we just didn’t know how he’d respond. But shoot. He’s had a heckuva first two games to start,” his coach remarked.

“The one thing that’s special about Pharrell, ever since I met him, he has just soaked in every single thing that I’ve talked to him about,” Herbener continued of Whitfield. “What I love is that I can coach him hard, and he takes it to where then he’s the one asking me questions…He’s turned into one of the most coachable kids I’ve ever been around. For him to only be a sophomore and carry himself that way is just incredible.”

Even still, talented underclassmen littered throughout the roster and all, there simply is no substitute for senior leadership. Herbener was also cognizant of that in assessing the outcome of Saturday’s tilt.

“That was, ‘Let’s just get Shellhammer in space and let him go make the right play,’” Herbener said when describing the final, go-ahead shot that resulted in Luke Hurst’s game-winning heroics that proved to be the difference. “He’s in a tough spot this year being the only guy with a ton of varsity experience,” he added of Grayson Shellhammer. “Naturally, you think, ‘I’m the only guy with a lot of experience, I have to out and always score 15 points.’ I said in the locker room, ‘That’s our senior point guard, game on the line, trusting his teammate to make the right shot,’” said Herbener. “I couldn’t be any happier for (Shellhammer). He’s such an incredible kid that I just consider myself fortunate enough to even be able to coach him.”

And for a first week that saw storylines aplenty littered across the board in regard to Section Two of the Lancaster-Lebanon League, here’s another group to add into the equation with the Ephrata Mounts. After all, no matter what happens the rest of the way, they are already dubbed a crowned champion. Certainly not a bad way to get out of the starting blocks to begin a new era.