Leo!
When SHU Head Athletic Trainer Leo Katsetos was named Division I Athletic Trainer of the Year, he was shocked. No one else was.
From the Fall 2021 issue of Sacred Heart University Magazine
By Kimberly Swartz
Leo Katsetos hadn’t personally worked with Sacred Heart’s dance team all that much. But in April this year, the team was headed to Florida to compete on the national stage and needed an athletic trainer to accompany them in case something should go awry. Katsetos, 45, SHU’s senior associate athletic director and head athletic trainer, stepped in to help out.
By the end of the week, the team had earned a place on the podium and Katsetos had earned a place in their hearts. So much so that, celebrating their success with the team at the beach, Katsetos found himself suddenly swept off his feet and lifted over the team’s heads to chants of “Leo! Leo! Leo!” before being ceremoniously dunked in Florida’s crystal blue water.
“I didn’t fight it,” he admits. “I was proud of what they’d accomplished.”
Judy Ann Riccio, SHU’s athletic director, remembers the moment well as she was also in Florida that same week with SHU’s cheerleading team. When the cheerleaders found out they were national champions, the first call they made was to Katsetos. “He’s someone so interested and so invested in every team’s success,” Riccio says.
But that’s Leo for you. Passion isn’t anything extra—it’s the norm. It’s the driving force behind everything he’s done in his career.
Katsetos’ parents, immigrants from Greece, owned and operated a family restaurant on Chincoteague Island, the small, seven-mile-long island off the coast of Virginia famous for its tourism and small ponies. Katsetos grew up in the bustling restaurant with his siblings. He did his homework there, and as soon as he was old enough, he worked there, folding pizza boxes, busing tables, delivering food, working his way up to waiter and even helping his parents manage the restaurant. “We really only went home to sleep,” he remembers. “My work ethic comes from my parents. It was instilled in me at a young age.”
High school on the island consisted of about 40 peers (“We were the second-smallest public school in Virginia”).
When Katsetos wasn’t concentrating on his academics or working at his parents’ restaurant, he was playing a sport—baseball, football, soccer or basketball—something for every season. “Everything I did was based around athletics.”
But it wasn’t until his freshman year at Old Dominion University that Katsetos started to consider athletic training as a career. “I tore my ACL my freshman year,” Katsetos said. “Not being on a DI roster, I was given the rare opportunity to perform my rehabilitation within the athletic training department at ODU, which meant I got to see firsthand what the sports medicine team did to support me.”
It was an eye-opening experience. Athletic trainers are highly qualified, multiskilled health-care professionals whose responsibilities include primary care, injury and illness prevention, wellness promotion and education, emergent care, examination and clinical diagnosis, therapeutic intervention and rehabilitation of injuries and medical conditions.
Working with the athletic trainers at ODU, Katsetos realized he was never going to be “good enough” to play college sports, but he could still be around sports and interact with the athletes—all while having a large influence on their success. “I realized what it meant to help people,” Katsetos said. “Getting a student-athlete back on the field or the court after injury is amazing—it’s amazing for the athletic trainer and for the athlete.”
Ultimately Katsetos double-degreed at ODU, earning his master’s there in 2001. Hired by Sacred Heart as an assistant athletic trainer shortly thereafter, his career was up and running. He was making a good impression on his supervisors and colleagues, getting on well with the student-athletes and truly enjoying being part of the Pioneer community. Then something weird happened. He started feeling numbness and tingling sensations in his lower extremities in the fall of 2003.
“I thought it was coming from my back and that I may have a herniated disc or two,” he recalls.
After seeing a team physician, he learned his discomfort was not coming from his spine. He was referred to a neurologist. An MRI revealed multiple sclerosis (MS), a disease that affects the central nervous system. Typically, in the first few years after diagnosis, episodes of symptoms come and go in flareups or “attacks.”
“It was more than a shock,” Katsetos remembers. “The more I read about MS, the worse I felt mentally.”
Katsetos started to dwell on his MS prognosis. An otherwise healthy and active male in his 20s, the thought of losing his vision or ability to walk was a hard pill to swallow. His last bad episode was in 2007. “It hit me hard,” he said. “I woke up one morning and realized I couldn’t use the left side of my body. I spiraled down a road of depression and it really scared me.”
After a few months, everything returned to normal. Katsetos said at that point, a switch flipped inside of him. “I told myself I needed to take better care of myself in order to be prepared for the worst that MS has to offer.” He made lifestyle changes, altered his diet and added more exercise to his routine. He lost about 45 pounds and even began to train in endurance races.
MS can be considered an “invisible disease”—most people don’t see what someone with the condition is going through. They don’t see the fatigue and the strain it puts on a person. “I have tough days and I have good days,” Katsetos says. “I just want people to know that an MS diagnosis is not a death sentence.”
“Leo is in tip-top shape,” Riccio says. “People wouldn’t know he has MS. The only reason they do is because he’s such a champion for the cause.” Katsetos organizes an annual MS walk in Westport each year called “Sacred Hearts for HOPE.” He has also worked extensively with the MS Society over the years, even serving as ambassador as well as the National MS Society spokesperson in 2006.
But that is exactly how Katsetos approaches his condition—and life. He realized a long time ago that while he cannot control the cards he’s dealt, he does have control over how he plays the hand. “I have MS. It doesn’t have me.”
In short, embrace life and make the most of it.
That philosophy, which he lives even in the face of his own challenges, is inspiring to more than just the student-athletes whose lives and careers he touches. This past July, Katsetos was named the Division I Athletic Trainer of the Year by the National Athletic Training Association. Making the accolade even sweeter, Katsetos was nominated for the award by his former supervisor and mentor at SHU, Julie Alexander, now one of the head athletic trainers at Eastern Connecticut State University.
While the accolade left Katsetos “shocked, but really humbled,” he continues his work in the same quietly affable vein which was born on Chincoteague and found its home at SHU. “You just walk around, get to know everyone, try to make a difference and achieve the most.”
Kimberly Swartz is associate director of media relations at Sacred Heart University.