On Saturday, 20 teams across the map traveled to Cary, North Carolina, determined to show out and bring home gold at the 16U National Team Championships in North Carolina.

Some teams finished day one on a high note, winning both games, but the journey for Wow Factor has been much different.

Wow Factor dropped its lone game on day one to Team Elite, 9-1. Instead of getting down on themselves, head coach Mike Selfe shared a message with his team after the loss, providing them with a sense of confidence heading into day two.

“We had to get off of the snide. Baseball is the greatest thing because every day is a new day. We always tell them that we have to take one pitch at a time, one game at a time,” said Selfe. “It sounds like a cliche, but in the world of baseball, you have to play it that way.”

Wow Factor responded to the loss in tremendous fashion, knocking off Power Baseball 5-2 and registering its first win of the tournament. Selfe was impressed by the way that his team handled adversity.

“After dropping our first game yesterday, we came out with a lot more energy today. We were really flat yesterday; it was kind of disappointing to see us play at that level,” Selfe stated. “So to see the game we played today, our defense behind our pitchers was really good and we took advantage of some opportunities at the plate.

“We shook up our lineup a little bit today too, so it was nice to see guys step up that hadn't been in the lineup a lot. It was really cool to see that today. All around, it was a pretty good game for us.”

Coach Selfe commended his team and the resilience they displayed to get back into the win column. He harped on the importance of defense and Taylor Latham’s pitching performance and how it pushed them to a win in a crucial situation.

“He commanded the strike zone all day. He got in trouble, having a high leverage inning early but he was able to pitch around it,” said Selfe about Latham. “He also had all three of his pitches working, pitching ahead in the count most of the ball game. He was an impressive young man today. It was really fun to watch him pitch.”

Selfe wants to keep the winning spirit alive and acknowledges that his team needs to stay in the moment so that they can truly focus on the task ahead of them in order to make it to the championship game.

“We have to approach each game one at a time. You always want to be in control of your own destiny and when you lose a ball game, like we did yesterday, it's out of your hands a bit. So every run that we give up is huge from this point on.”