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The United States followed up its thrilling 9-8 loss to Canada with another barn burner yesterday, beating Mexico 7-6 in an extra inning.

The young squad now sits squarely in fourth place with a 3-2 record at the world championships and will face powerhouse Japan today at 6:30.

Coach Tim Lyon鈥檚 team is winning games despite relying heavily on several under-agers. In fact, the club played six 17-year-old players against Canada Sunday night.

鈥淲e鈥檙e very young and I think they got a lot of good experience,鈥濃�坱he 54-year-old from South Jordan, Utah, told the Star Sunday.

鈥淲e鈥檙e hosting the next event ... so the plan was to bring along some young kids that could play on that team too,鈥濃�圠yon explained.

鈥淭here鈥檚 nothing like experience, and so that鈥檚 really what we did.鈥�

The 11th ISF Junior Men鈥檚 World Softball Championship will be held in Midland, Mich., in 2016.

Typically, the U.S. isn鈥檛 considered a tournament favourite due to the popularity of baseball heavily outweighing softball across the country.

For instance, Japan likely had 1,000 pitchers to choose from, while the U.S. had just eight, Lyon said.

鈥淢ost of our kids are baseball players,鈥� he admitted. 鈥淲e try to convince them that softball is not a sport their girlfriend plays.鈥�

Despite that, pitcher Phil鈥圸immerman is among the tournament鈥檚 best after recording both USA wins alongside 27 strikeouts.

At the plate, cleanup hitter Tyler Stoffel has four RBIs in five games, while leadoff man Bryce Ducharme is among the tournament leaders with a .474 batting average.