Stony Brook's Luciana Setteducate turns out to be quite the goal-scorer for Rough Riders

Luciana Setteducate didn’t even know if she was going to see the field for the Long Island Rough Riders when she first joined the team. The Bellmore native was looking for self-improvement and a competitive team to train with this summer before entering her junior season for the Stony Brook women’s soccer team.

What she found was one of the most coveted awards in any level of soccer.

Setteducate scored 18 goals in 12 games for the Rough Riders to win the Golden Boot as the league’s top scorer this summer. The Rough Riders play in the USL W League, a pre-professional women’s soccer league in North America. Setteducate finished with six more goals than any other player in the 80-club league.

“I was just going to try my best to get rostered and it just ended up going really well,” Setteducate said. “The first couple of practices, I felt really good and it just started clicking.”

After scoring two goals in her first game in her first season with the Rough Riders, Setteducate felt she could have a special summer.

“There’s a lot of talented girls on the Rough Riders, so for me to be able to just contribute felt really good,” Setteducate said. “I remember going home to my parents and I was over here just hoping to get rostered and now it felt like I really had a chance to do something to help the team this summer.”

Setteducate was a two-time Newsday All-Long Island second-team selection for Mepham. She was on a Rough Riders roster filled with strong Long Island talent, including former Newsday girls soccer Player of the Years Gianna Paul (Whitman) and Lia Howard (Massapequa) with many other Newsday All-Long Island selections from their high school days.

The Rough Riders went 10-0-2 during the regular season and lost to eventual champion NC Courage U23 in the quarterfinals.

“We’d go to training and it was always very intense,” Setteducate said. “Everyone would push each other and that’s a big reason why I was able to get the Golden Boot. A lot of the goals were opportunities that were created by the girls around me and they pushed me to get better and they created a lot of opportunities on the field that I was able to finish. But the talent was just unreal.”

Rough Riders general manager Tanner Sands said they had high hopes for Setteducate. But scoring six goals more than anyone else in the league is more than anyone could have expected.

“Obviously that’s quite the statement and very impressive,” Sands said. “Goal scoring is not easy, it’s not easy to find players who are so comfortable in the box and it just seemed to come easy for her and that shows through the amount of goals she was able to put in.”

The continued success doesn’t surprise Mepham girls soccer coach Janine Bizelia. Setteducate made the Mepham varsity as a seventh grader and Bizelia witnessed the improvement each season.

“She almost played like a guy,” Bizelia said. “When I first met her, she just played bigger than an 11-year-old. Her talent was always a year or two above what she was. She fit in right when she started in the seventh grade.”

Putting together a strong summer and winning the Golden Boot was exactly what Setteducate needed. She wasn’t satisfied with her sophomore season at Stony Brook, posting two goals and three assists, but this summer provided that confidence boost she was looking for.

“Getting this award really helped my confidence a lot because I know I can score now,” Setteducate said. “There were periods of times in my career where I felt in a slump and felt it just wasn’t going my way and I couldn’t get the ball in the net, but I realized I can and that’s what I want to do at Stony Brook. I was able to bring myself out of a low moment in my soccer career and not let it get to me, not let it keep me down and show that I can still score and produce.”