Daywalt handed Davie (13-9) a 4-3 season-sustaining victory over Mount Tabor, the Central Piedmont Conference Tournament championship and a home game in Tuesday’s first round of the 4A state playoffs with one sweeter-than-honey swing. He connected with the first pitch of the last of the seventh — a hanging curve from Mount Tabor’s Chris Bryan — driving it high and deep.

Hundreds of fans rose as one at the crack of aluminum — half of them hoping, half of them screaming — as the ball soared outward and upward. War Eagle coach Mike Herndon, wriggled like a chained-up Harry Houdini in the third base coaching box, trying mightily to coax the ball into climbing those last few stubborn feet above the left-field wall at Mando Field.

“He hit it where the ball carries, but I still used all my body English,” laughed Herndon. “Then I saw it hit some dangling tree limbs behind the fence. After that, I just wanted to make sure the kid touched all the bases.”

It was the moment of a lifetime for Daywalt, son of George Daywalt, Davie’s former American Legion coach.

“It’s the kind of stuff you dream about,” said the kid shortstop, who was mobbed by delirious teammates. “I was just trying to get on base and I got the perfect pitch.”

In his previous at-bat, Daywalt, who’s been hampered this year by a pulled quad muscle and a cracked ankle, had been over-anxious, flailing and fanning on a delivery that would have been ball four. But when prime time arrived he was primed and ready.

The win was a miraculous one for Herndon, but what else is new? The Davie coach has now won all nine one-run CPC games he’s been involved with in his two never-a-dull-moment years in the league.

Davie, seeded second, was outhit 11-5 by a talented (though fourth-seeded) Mount Tabor team, that looked to have a deeper lineup, more speed and stronger pitching.

“But we still found a way to win,” said Herndon. “We’ve over-achieved all year. This game just exemplified the way this team’s done it. We’ve got some special kids who never give up.”

Brad Willard had a two-out, two-run single for Davie, capping a three-run third that was ignited by a rare catcher’s interference call.

Incredibly, four Mount Tabor runners died at the plate, two erased by failed squeezes in the second and fifth innings.

Also in the fifth, an inning in which the Spartans (13-11) had a double, three singles, a stolen base, a wild pitch and a hit batsman, and still managed only two runs, second baseman Thadd Johnson’s perfect relay throw home to catcher Drew Ridenhour cut down Justin Parker trying to score from first on a double. That was a switch. During football season, it was quarterback Ridenhour throwing strikes to receiver Johnson.

In the fourth, Davie starting pitcher Ross Smith staved off disaster by starting a 1-2-3 double play after the Spartans loaded the bases with no outs.

Cody Wright relieved Smith in the fifth and put the War Eagles in position to win with some tidy relief work. He got a boost when Tabor’s leadoff man in the seventh, Justin Plummer, singled to right, but was thrown out by Willard when he tried to stretch the hit.

When the War Eagles came to the dugout for the last of the seventh, the ever optimistic Herndon had a message for them. “We’ve got them right where we want them,” he said with a straight face. “Let’s win this thing right now in dramatic fashion.”

Daywalt took his coach at his word.

And thanks to Daywalt’s blast, Herndon can put to rest the memory of ‘99 when the War Eagles had a super regular season, but missed the playoffs through an unlikely chain of CPCTournament upsets.