Correct, columns = sections. Unfortunately that’s fixed; you can’t choose to have Board columns be anything other than sections (and vice versa on Lists).
I don’t recall seeing a request for that to be more flexible, so you might want to create a new post with that suggestion here in the Product Feedback area, so folks can vote on it.
Also FYI, if you want to have a “status” custom field that’s automatically kept in sync with a task’s column, you can easily do that using an If-Then Rule in my Flowsana integration.