College Bowling Assistant Fired for Affair With Player on Team His Wife Coaches
Amber Lemke’s husband, Steve, reportedly had an affair with a student on the team.
"The couple who works together stays together" is not a phrase you hear often. There are a number of issues that can arise when your career intermingles with that of your spouse. One woman, the head coach of a women's bowling team, reportedly discovered her husband's infidelity when she learned that he was having an affair with one of the team members.
Amber Lemke is the head coach of the women's bowling team at Stephen F. Austin State University. Her husband, Steve Lemke, worked underneath her as the assistant coach. However, he was forced to resign after the school discovered he was having an affair with a team member, the New York Post reported.
Steve resigned on April 10. "I knew it was kind of a no-no, there's not a rule saying it can't happen," he said in a statement, per The Daily Sentinel. The school is not releasing the name of the student involved.
"There's not a law saying I'm going to go to jail for doing something like this," he added. "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."
According to Steve, his wife discovered the affair via text. "It didn't have anything in detail," Steve said of the text. "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."
"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," 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."
According to court records, the couple is going through a divorce. And, while there are no laws against a coach and student having a consensual relationship, the school did have rules against it, said SFA athletic director Ryan Ivey.
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"He's not working here anymore," Ivey said of Steve. "From a departmental standpoint, he had a choice, and he chose to resign." He also added that the student involved would not return to the team next year. "As soon as we found out, we went through the process," Ivey said. "We support our student-athletes and obviously Amber, with what was going on."