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Vestaburg softball head coach Phil Block died suddenly on Friday night at the age of 56. Block spent many years as an umpire helping to call games around the Central Michigan area before coaching the Wolverines softball program for the past two seasons. — DN file photo
RICHLAND TOWNSHIP — A shock wave of emotion is still reverberating around the Vestaburg community this week after losing a valued member of the Vestaburg Athletic Department.
Phil Block, who was the head coach of the Vestaburg softball team for the past two seasons, died on Friday night at McLaren Central Michigan Hospital in Mount Pleasant, per his obituary.
The news came as a shock to those close to him, including Matt Koutz, who has been an assistant coach with Block for the past two seasons. Koutz and Block met up for a meeting on Friday morning regarding the upcoming softball season and Koutz left the meeting with no concerns about Block and his health.
“I didn’t think anything was wrong,. I thought he was fine,” Koutz told the Daily News. “When we parted ways on Friday morning and everything was good to go, I had no bad feeling about it. He looked good. …
“When I got up Saturday morning, his brother Tim, who lives in St. Louis and is a friend of mine, that post I saw, that’s how I got word that he passed. So I texted Tim right away to find out details. I was really shocked, that’s what I woke up to on Saturday morning.”
Koutz added that he’s known Block for at least 25 years and growing closer with him over the last few certainly made the news that much harder to swallow.
“Having coached in the area since the early ’90s in different capacities, I’ve had many games that Phil officiated of mine,” Koutz said. “We’ve been friends for years but have really gotten quite a bit closer over the last two years coaching together, obviously. It was a huge loss, a huge weight, I had a real sick feeling on Saturday morning trying to come to grips with the fact that he was gone.”
Vestaburg Athletic Director Ty Warczinsky, also an assistant coach on the football team, first heard about Block’s health situation on Friday night. With Block serving as a softball umpire for numerous years before becoming the head coach at Vestaburg, the word spread quickly around the referee community.
“I actually found out at our game on Friday that he had a heart attack,” Warczinsky said. “Obviously, he’s really well known in the reffing community, so they informed me and the head coach, Steve (Clements). At that time, we were hoping he was going to pull through but that next day is when I found out that he didn’t make it.”
Vestaburg junior Addi Neelis has been on the varsity softball team since her freshman year when Block first got the job. She had spent the night at a friend’s house on Friday and was presented with the news the next morning.
“I was surprised when my mom was standing right by me and she just said, ‘Your dad and I would like to tell you some news — Phil died,’” Neelis recalled. “And right away, I knew exactly what she meant. I started crying right away because I just was in so much shock that he was gone so early and forever.”
The Vestaburg softball program struggled in Block’s first season in 2022 with the Wolverines not getting a win until May and finishing 8-22. Last season, the Wolverines stepped up their win total to 11, but this struggle was largely anticipated by Block and Koutz.
Vestaburg junior Addi Neelis, at right, said she had a very special bond with head coach Phil Block, who died unexpectedly on Friday night. “I always remember him being super loud and happy all of the time and he always supported me throughout anything — whether it was school or softball,” Neelis said. “He always came to other sports in the offseason to support us. He told me he was going to get me to college for softball because I was that good of a player to him and he always made sure I knew how talented I was at softball.” — Submitted photo
“I was the interim coach the year prior to us hiring Phil,” Koutz said. “Some of our discussions, as he came on board, was that it was going to be a rough year or two in terms of wins and losses because the cupboard was really bare, to use an old cliché. … Looking back, we really struggled the first year, obviously, we had a JV team playing varsity softball. Even this last year, we thought last year was going to be a good transition but I think we overachieved what we initially thought.”
With the young team growing in confidence, a rebound season is expected to be on the horizon for the program.
“Obviously with the growth we saw in the first year, the increased dedication in the offseason, that was one thing he really pushed was getting in the barn and getting the work in during the offseason,” Koutz said of Block. “That has improved over both offseasons, we’ve already seen more work put in during this offseason than we have in years past. He really helped to kind of lay that foundation for us to build off of and, hopefully, we can continue off that because he really did a solid job at building that foundation.”
Neelis said Block immediately earned the respect of the team upon taking the job as he held them to standards they weren’t used to, pushing them to constantly improve.
“He came in and instilled discipline right away, which our group really needed,” Neelis said. “We’ve never really been pushed or necessarily had rules or anything like that in sports and I think that’s what we really needed. We were not a strong group at all, by any means, right away, we were young. He always wanted us to be our best and he pushed us every single day and he cared about us, a lot. He called me after every single practice to see how he was doing as a coach and he’d also tell me how proud of me he was every day, he just wanted me to get better. He was the type of coach who thought of us as his own kids and with me especially, we had a really special bond.”
Block had a core belief in the team and a goal to bring the Vestaburg softball program back to greatness after the team made its historic run to the state semifinals in 2014. Block was targeting this season as the true turnaround for the Wolverines to have a great run of softball, aiming to take down Mount Pleasant Sacred Heart for MSAC league supremacy.
“Some of these kids will now be juniors and now they’ll be leaders for the freshmen who are coming in and we have a heck of a good class coming in,” Block told the Daily News in May. “The next six years of Vestaburg softball are going to be awesome. We just have to keep getting better all of the time. But I’m proud of those guys, they fight through everything. They’re young but they’re always fighting through it.”
Neelis said it was really special to have someone like Block in her corner who had such a belief in her, the team and their success.
“I personally have known him for a few extra years because he umpired for me a few years before he came to coach,” Neelis recalled. “I always remember him being super loud and happy all of the time and he always supported me throughout anything — whether it was school or softball. He always came to other sports in the offseason to support us.”
Neelis and a group of players decided to meet on Sunday at the softball field to help honor Block. Initially planning for it just to be the softball players, Neelis said they also decided to invite Block’s family and were pleased to see a lot of his family members show up as well as some community members.
“We just shared memories in the middle of the softball field and it was really special — it was a little bit of closure for some of us and it was really nice to be together because that’s where we spent most of our time with Phil,” Neelis said.
Block, a 1986 graduate of Beal City High School, may not have been a native of the Vestaburg community but he ingratiated himself into it quickly and became a staple around all levels of Vestaburg softball.
“He had the biggest heart,” Koutz said. “He cared not just about his players, he cared about everybody he came in contact with. All the way down to our kids in 10-U and 12-U, the youth clinics that he put on and the relationships he was building with those kids, just a huge heart. Even though he’s not from Vestaburg, he was quickly becoming a part of Vestaburg and will always be a part of Vestaburg now.”
Despite only interacting with Block since early August when he got the athletic director position, Warczinsky shared that Block’s presence was unmistakable and he left a great impact on the Vestaburg community.
“It’s been a short amount of time but the heart of this man and the lives he impacted, it’s not hard to see,” Warczinsky said. “The loss has been felt throughout the Vestaburg community.”
Neelis hopes the Wolverines can help honor Block this season and carry on the legacy of success he so badly hoped to see for them.
“A lot of girls struggled because he said we were going to do great things this year because we’ve been working together for going on three years now,” she said. “I think we’ve decided all together that this season will be dedicated to him.”
