Stephen F. Austin bowling assistant out after relationship with student athlete

A Stephen F. Austin assistant bowling coach resigned after it was discovered that he was having an inappropriate relationship with a player on the team.

Steve Lemke, who is married to the team's head coach, Amber Lemke, was given a choice to resign or be fired by the school. He quit on April 10.

"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."

The school won national championships in 2016 and 2019 and had runner-up finishes in 2015 and 2022.

Steve Lemke said he did nothing wrong in having a relationship with the 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."

The relationship between Lemke and the player was discovered when Amber Lemke saw a text from the player on Steve Lemke’s phone. The couple 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 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.

“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."