Steve Lemke, formerly an assistant coach at Stephen F. Austin State University in Nacogdoches, Texas, tossed his job and marriage in the gutter over an affair with a student athlete, according to multiple reports.
“I knew it was kind of a no-no but there’s not a rule saying it can’t happen,” said Lemke, according to The Daily Sentinel. “There’s not a law saying I’m going to go to jail for doing something like this. There’s nothing in stone. I guess it’s just an ethics code, like we frown upon it, but there’s no rule, there’s no law broken.”
Per the outlet, the 38-year-old is married to head coach Amber Lemke, though she has filed for divorce. He said that his wife was suspicious of texts she saw and “dug through” his phone before he admitted to the affair.
Lemke chose to resign April 10 rather than being fired, said The Daily Sentinel.
“He’s not working here anymore,” said SFA athletic director Ryan Ivey, who confirmed that Lemke violated the school’s relationship rules.
“From a departmental standpoint, he had a choice and he chose to resign.”
Although he chose to resign, Lemke has defended the affair, and described it as a consensual relationship between adults. He also claimed it has been “amplified to the magnitude that it is now because of the national championship caliber that we’ve developed.”
Stephen F. Austin State University’s women’s bowling team won national championships in 2016 and 2019 and had runner-up finishes in 2015 and 2022, according to USA Today. Women’s bowling is the only sport at the university to win a national title after its move to the NCAA’s Division I, said The Daily Sentinel.
Before he was hired as an assistant coach in 2019, Steve Lemke was a volunteer assistant with the program, USA Today said.
“I was the stay-at-home dad for five years with the kids while Amber got to go off and coach the team. And when she’d get back, I’d run practices on top of taking care of the kids while she was back,” he said. “When they’d travel again, I would sit back and take care of the kids. Then when I got hired on, she almost forced me to run practices. I was a volunteer the entire time before that trying to help out Amber. Once I got hired on, one thing stemmed from another. I felt like I was doing too much for what I was being valued at.”
Amber Lemke did not respond to requests for comment, said The Daily Sentinel. She will keep coaching the team, “and the player has exhausted her eligibility,” according to USA Today.
Ivey said that the school supports its student athletes “and obviously Amber, with what was going on.”
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