PRESTON — Abby Jones loves playing soccer in Franklin County.

    She should. After all, the Pocatello senior defender is quite deadly with the ball at her feet, especially on free kicks.

    Such was the case Tuesday afternoon as Jones found the back of the net on two free kicks to lead Pocatello to a 2-1 upset victory over Preston in a 4A Fifth District girls soccer match.

    “Maybe this is my lucky field,” said Jones, who has scored at least five goals on free kicks here over the past two seasons.

    This was just the second victory of the season for Pocatello.

    “That is one of the better games we’ve played,” Jones said. “... We’ve pretty much lost all our games, but recently, we’ve kind of had a different attitude and have been a lot more positive, even at practice.

    “We practice how we play and we’ve been picking up the intensity. We’ve improved, maybe not skills-wise, but as a team. We’re more unified.”

    Preston head coach Brandon Lyon can certainly tell a difference in Pocatello.

    “(Poky head coach Doug Merkley) has made some adjustments since the last time we played them and they’re going to be  a handful come tournament time,” Lyon said. “One of the biggest adjustments is they sit back defensively, they don’t allow anything to come in and their goal is to counter long, get a set piece, get a free kick and let (Jones) line it up. ... It’s a smart move on his part what he’s doing.    

    “But having said that, we didn’t do the things we’ve been doing. We weren’t moving, we weren’t going to balls, we weren’t giving support to our teammates, our first touches were off.”

Preston certainly dominated the match and outshot Poky 18-5, but only had the one goal to show for it.    “It was really frustrating for us because we know we should have won them,” Preston forward Anna-Marie White said. “It was just a rough game for us. We weren’t playing as hard as we could have and our touches were off.”

    Pocatello goalkeeper Dani Jorgensen recorded 12 saves in the victory.

    “She stepped up to the pressure,” said Jones, who is also Poky’s place-kicker on the football team. “She’s had practice because she’s had lots of shots on her. She’s improved a lot as a goalie.”    

    Jones scored her first goal from about 30 yards to give the visiting Indians a 1-0 lead in the 18th minute.

    Despite the fact it held an 11-3 advantage in shots during the first half, Preston spent the majority of the time standing around.

    “It was one of those games where everything that could go wrong went wrong,” Lyon said. “Everything we’ve been working on didn’t work. But the reality is that you have those games and the worst thing we can do is let it make us think we’re not good enough and we’re not going to continue to win games. We’ve got lofty goals, we’ve just got to move on from this and learn from it.    

    “Sometimes along the way you need little moments like this to kind of set the sights and refocus a little bit and hopefully that’s what it will do for us.”

    Kenidee Hyde scored the equalizer for Preston in the 42nd as she tucked a shot into the lower-right corner of the goal, past a diving Jorgensen.

    But, Jones gave the visiting Indians the lead back five minutes later when she scored on a free kick from midfield.

    “They were really good shots,” White said. “They really were. ... We just need to shake this off and not dwell on it, and just play how we know how to play because we can play better than this.”