(South Bend) — Joel Reinebold, a longtime baseball coach in the area, most recently at Clay High School, died Sunday morning at the age of 65.

Reinebold suffered a massive heart attack Monday while working out.  He never regained consciousness. His brother, Jon, said Reinebold died Sunday morning holding a baseball in his left hand.

Joel played at Clay for his dad, Jim Reinebold, a legendary baseball coach who guided the Colonials to a state title in 1970. Jim wore 4 and Joel took 44 as his uniform number.

After Joel’s playing days, he was the original groundskeeper for the South Bend White Sox, keeping the Coveleski Stadium field immaculate.  Even after his days with South Bend’s Class A team were done, Reinebold continued helping other schools rehabilitate their fields, including recent projects at Tri-Township and New Prairie.

During his time as a groundskeeper, Joel would help his Dad run camps, and opened “The School of Hard Knocks” training facility in Mishawaka.  It was here that Reinebold often taught private and group lessons, trying to help grow the game.

The coaching bug bit Joel hard, and he served as an assistant at Penn under Greg Dikos, before taking the head coaching job at Clay in 2014.  His decade with the Colonials often found Reinebold teaching kids with no previous baseball experience how to play the game.  He took that same love into a foundation he created called “Rounding Third”, where he would take gently used equipment to distribute to young people in  Jamaica and to local inner-city youth.

Reinebold’s death is the second blow for the Clay community in the last two weeks. Legendary Colonials basketball player Jaraan Cornell died June 6.