College coaches are not supposed to have an affair with a player. So it’s really bad if you are an assistant coach, and you have a relationship with a player, and the head coach finds out.
But it’s exponentially worse if the head coach happens to be your wife.
That’s the bizarre predicament in which Steve Lemke found himself. The Lufkin Daily News reports that the Stephen F. Austin State University assistant bowling coach resigned, rather than be fired after news of his affair with a player came to light.
The affair was discovered after his wife, Amber Lemke, the team’s head coach, found messages on his phone.
Adding intrigue to the story is the fact that Stephen F. Austin State is college bowling’s version of Alabama in football. In recent years SFA has won two national titles and finished second twice.
Lemke and his wife have filed for divorce in the aftermath of his infidelity.
It gets more bizarre — in an interview with the Daily News, Steve Lemke defended his decision to have the improper relationship.
“I knew it was kind of a no-no, but there’s not a rule saying it can’t happen,” Steve Lemke said. “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.”
While such relationships may seem consensual, most universities have strict rules in place prohibiting them.
Steve Lemke, who worked for eight years as a volunteer with the program before being put on the payroll in 2019, aired out his grievances against his wife, essentially saying he was overworked and under-appreciated.
“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.”