Scholar of Steel

From hardscrabble roots in steel and coal country, Professor Christopher Petrosino has carved out an industry-leading career in physical therapy.

From the Spring 2025 issue of Sacred Heart University Magazine

By Max Dickstein

Antonio Petrosino convalesces in a nursing home facility that overlooks the decommissioned Wheeling-Pittsburgh Steel Steubenville North Works plant. His visiting son, Professor Christopher Petrosino, chair of Physical Therapy & Human Movement Sciences at Sacred Heart University, once developed an onsite physical therapy department at that plant early in his career.

Christopher Petrosino: Remember any of my high school games?
Antonio Petrosino: You were like a nut out there, running all over the place. Didn’t matter if you were on offense or defense, you were there on all the plays. You had the speed. You weren’t afraid of getting a hit.
Christopher: After playing sandlot football with no pads, having pads on was like nothing. It didn’t hurt.

“Petro, You Go After the Ball.”

It was the fall of 1983, and Bill McHugh foresaw a big season in the Ohio Valley Athletic Conference for Class 3-A Buckeye South High School’s football program. With one notable exception, the success of Coach McHugh’s quick 4-4 defense would depend on players shouldering responsibilities that shifted with each play. During the preseason, the coach met individually with Buckeye South’s entire lineup to make sure each player knew the playbook up and down—until he arrived at that exception: Christopher Lee “Petro” Petrosino, his senior middle guard.

Wily, aggressive and fearless, “Petro” was the grandson of a coal miner, Mario Banal, and steel worker, Tony Petrosino, and son of a miner and steel and titanium worker, Antonio Petrosino, who once played on the line in exhibition games against the inmates of the state prison in Moundsville, West Virginia. Growing up, Christopher Petrosino and his friends, like their forebears, played full-speed tackle football with no gear in vacant sandlots. (“Their sons gallop terribly against each other’s bodies,” as the Ohio Valley poet James Wright once wrote.)

Coach McHugh took a good look at Christopher Petrosino. They didn’t come tougher than this five-foot-eight, 150-pound hunter of opposing quarterbacks and rushers who dared to gain yardage against the Buckeye South Rebels of Tiltonsville, Ohio.

“Petro,” McHugh said, “you go after the ball.”

Unleashed by McHugh for Buckeye South all season, Petrosino invaded opposing backfields right after the snap of the ball, frequently stopping runs for losses and sacking the quarterback 19½ times. Because he also blocked for the Rebels’ running attack and played special teams, he never left the field.

Petrosino’s success led one teammate to create a cheering section called “The Little Petro Fan Club,” stocking the bleachers with home fans waving “Go Petro” signs. Petrosino made the all-conference and all-district teams. Buckeye South went 8-2 but missed the state playoffs when a critical field goal attempt sailed wide.

Antonio Petrosino: Back then there were coal mines all over the place. You could get a job anywhere—walk out of one mine, go into another one.
Christopher Petrosino: That’s when I graduated high school. It was either go to the steel mills or go to college.
Antonio: Yeah.
Christopher: Did you ever think I’d go to college?
Antonio: Yeah, I think I did.

“Shooting for the Stars and Hitting the Moon.”

As he starred on the field, the teenage Petrosino watched his father, Antonio, transition from working the mines to teaching others how to do it.

“The steel mills started buying up coal mines because they needed coal to power their plants,” Petrosino recalls. “My dad went from the coal mines to training steel workers how to work them.”

Having gotten the most out of his slight frame as a football player, Petrosino saw a future as a physical therapist helping people function better in their jobs.

Petrosino’s family, team and community recognized the undersized Petrosino’s gridiron grit, but college football scholarship offers did not follow. Then Petrosino fell short of admission to his dream physical therapy program at Duke University. His second choice, University of Miami in Florida, proved unaffordable. So, he opted to launch his training with two years at a branch campus of Ohio University, the state school close to home.

“I’ve grown to expect my history of shooting for the stars and hitting the moon,” Petrosino says.

His mother, Antoinette Petrosino, wrote him a letter of encouragement around that time.

“Everything works out for the best, you just have to keep the faith,” his mother wrote. “With your personality and energy, you won’t have any trouble getting a good job and accomplishing a lot of your goals.”

Christopher Petrosino: We went 8-2 that year, and if we beat St. Clairsville, we would have gone to the regionals or state. We were down by two. We lost by a field goal. We would have won.
Antonio Petrosino: I remember. Was that kick even close?
Christopher: Nope. Shanked it off to the side.

“Maybe Things Will Turn Out Just As You Wanted.”

Steel mill workers routinely assume unnaturally constricted positions. Millwrights, for example, go wherever an industrial mechanic is needed—welding, aligning, fitting, disassembling and reassembling equipment. Ladle liners arrange layers of bricks inside bus-sized ladles for transporting molten steel.

Petrosino set up his physical therapy office inside the Wheeling-Pittsburgh Steel Steubenville North Works plant, helping patients improve their movement and manage chronic and acute injuries, such as millwrights’ back pain from crawling and climbing or ladle liners’ shoulder pain from stacking bricks.

Increasingly, Petrosino found himself taking his ideas directly to the workers on site. He would climb into a ladle during lunch and exhort a gathering of veteran workers to extend their careers by working smarter—please.

“I ended up showing them exactly how to do the ladle lining,” Petrosino says. “People get habits. They were thinking, ‘Here’s this young guy coming in and telling me how to do my job when I’ve been doing this for 25 or 30 years.’

“I said, ‘You can continue to do it that way, but if you don’t do it correctly with the proper body mechanics, you’re going to get injured at some point, and you don’t want that happening when you’re ready to retire and really enjoy life,’” Petrosino says. “In physical therapy, you look at the normal movement of the body and what ranges you should be working in—the optimal position for lifting, pushing and pulling.”

After developing injury prevention and rehabilitation programs at the steel mill, Petrosino entered academia in the mid-1990s, building a distinguished career in service, advocacy, leadership, research and practice. He remains an advocate for physical therapy advancement, currently serving as Connecticut’s Chief Delegate to the American Physical Therapy Association (APTA). His academic leadership spans Ohio University and private Catholic institutions, including his current role as SHU’s chair of Physical Therapy & Human Movement Sciences. Colleagues from multiple universities, including Sacred Heart, submitted letters supporting his 2025 nomination for the Catherine Worthingham Fellow of the APTA, its highest membership category and most prestigious honor.

^{Peak Performance: Petrosino serves as Connecticut's Chief Delegate to the American Physical Therapy Association.}

“Born and raised in Appalachia, I wasn’t expected to go to college. But I think that actually caused the passion and drive to do what I’ve done in my career,” Petrosino says. “But I always tell people, there were smarter people in the steel mills than I’ve met in academia.”

The 58-year-old Petrosino continues to mentor students and colleagues, sharing his knowledge and experience to help encourage the next generation of physical therapists to strive for things they may have thought were out of reach.

“Even though I got a Ph.D. and I’ve been all the way to the associate provost level, it’s less about intelligence than how you work with individuals and how you get the job done,” adds the first-generation college graduate. “That was the mill mentality: Get the job done well with good quality.”

Petrosino and his wife, Rebecca, now have two college-age sons at SHU, Adam and Stephen. Petrosino plans one day to retire in Parkersburg, West Virginia, Rebecca’s hometown in the Ohio Valley, not far from where “Petro” once went after the ball for Coach McHugh.

“Typical Appalachian in sticking close to home,” Petrosino says. “I love driving motorcycles through the countryside.”

Petrosino visits his father frequently in the Steubenville facility. Antoinette Petrosino, his mother, died the day after Christmas in 2024.

“Maybe,” Antoinette wrote in that letter of encouragement to her son more than four decades ago, “things will turn out just as you wanted.”

Maybe they have.