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’s 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.

“We’re very young and I think they got a lot of good experience,” the 54-year-old from South Jordan, Utah, told the Star Sunday.

“We’re hosting the next event ... so the plan was to bring along some young kids that could play on that team too,” Lyon explained.

“There’s nothing like experience, and so that’s really what we did.”

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

Typically, the U.S. isn’t 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.

“Most of our kids are baseball players,” he admitted. “We try to convince them that softball is not a sport their girlfriend plays.”

Despite that, pitcher Phil Zimmerman is among the tournament’s 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.