After sitting and waiting nearly two extra hours for his team to take the field, Woodbury coach Kevin McDermott admitted he was concerned about how his team would respond.

Then Max Meyer went out, threw a few pitches, McDermott relaxed. His ace was on. His team was fine.

Meyer, a junior righthander, was outstanding, pitching 6 1/3 innings of one-hit ball and striking out seven as Woodbury routed mistake-prone Burnsville 7-0.

Meyer retired the first 11 batters he faced and didn’t walk a issue a walk, facing just two batters over the minimum in his stint.

“We had to wait two hours [for the previous game to end] and I was really concerned,” McDermott said. “But Max has been our guy all year. The kid’s a winner.”

Meyer, who looked after the game like he had yet to break sweat, said the key was his ability to throw his slider for strikes.

“When I started hitting the slider in the low zone, and the ump was calling it, I knew I could keep repeating that same pitch,” Meyer said. “That was one of my best games this season.”

Burnsville coach Mick Scholl said he had talked to opponents who had seen Meyer but that mattered little.

“His slider was hitting on the outside corner,” Scholl said. “He was throwing it for strikes and keeping it down. He’s a fantastic pitcher. We knew the slider was coming, but he located it so well.”

Woodbury (22-3) took control of the game in the fifth inning, scoring two runs without a hit. The Royals tacked on four more in the sixth, again taking advantage of Burnsville mistakes. In those two crucial innings, the Blaze walked three batters, threw two wild pitches, hit a batter and made three errors in the field.

“I haven’t seen that out of our team this year,” Scholl lamented. “What brought us here was pitching and defense. It was a bad for that to show up.”

The combination of a well-pitched game by starter Max Meyer and an opponent struggling on defense proved a perfect combination for No. 2-seeded Woodbury.

The Royals (22-3) broke open a close game with two runs in the fifth inning and four more in the sixth, taking advantage of three walks, a hit batter and three errors, to rout Burnsville 7-0 in the Class 4A quarterfinals Thursday at CHS Field.

Meyer, a junior, entered the game with a 0.88 ERA and lowered that with a brilliant effort on the mound. He retired the first nine batters he faced and gave up just one hit – a fourth-inning double by Burnsville’s Sam Carlson. He did not walk a battter in 6 and 1/3 innings.Tyler Gustafson and got the final two outs for Woodbury.

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