A Stephen F. Austin assistant bowling coach has resigned after revelations that he was having an inappropriate relationship with a player on the team.
According to USA Today, Steve Lemke, who is married to the team's head coach, Amber Lemke, was given a choice to either resign or be fired by the school.
"He’s not working here anymore," Stephen F. Austin athletic director Ryan Ivey said. "From a departmental standpoint, he had a choice and he chose to resign."
Steven Lemke said he did nothing wrong in having a relationship with a player and defended his actions.
"I knew it was kind of a no-no, but there’s not a rule saying it can’t happen," Lemke said, via 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."
Amber Lemke discovered the relationship when she found a text from the player on her husband's phone. The could has since filed for divorce.
"It didn’t have anything in detail," Steve Lemke said about the text message. "It was just about how amazing I am, basically, in general perspective. Amber saw that and questioned me, and I got to the point where it just built up so much that I basically told her the truth after she dug through my phone."
Steve Lemke was a a volunteer assistant with the program until 2019 when the school hired him as an assistant coach.
"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," Steve Lemke 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 will continue coaching the team, and the player has exhausted her eligibility.
