Plainfield North Athletic Director Resigns after Alleged Affair with Grad

Doug Stevens resigned his position as Plainfield North High School athletic director last week after it was learned he was allegedly having an affair with a 19-year-old woman who graduated from the school last year.

Stevens, 38, submitted his resignation at the Feb. 28 school board meeting, Plainfield School District 202 spokesman Tom Hernandez said. Because it is a personnel matter, Hernandez said he could not provide any other details.

However, Stevens’ estranged wife Jovy confirmed that his alleged relationship with a former student now in college was what prompted district officials to ask for his resignation.

Stevens' departure comes less than two months after Plainfield North physical education teacher Ashley Blumenshine was arrested and charged with aggravated criminal sexual abuse for allegedly having a relationship with a 16-year-old male student.

Jovy Stevens said she learned of the affair in January, and that her husband has since moved out of their Joliet home. She said she does not know whether the relationship began while the girl was a student at the school, but she believes he is continuing to see the girl, who is a year older than Doug Stevens' 18-year-old stepson, a Plainfield North student.

“(He) stopped talking to (his girlfriend) while he was being investigated,” Jovy Stevens said. “But then he called her the day after he resigned.”

Doug Stevens, reached via cell phone Sunday afternoon, declined to discuss the situation.

Stevens was hired as Plainfield North’s athletic director in August 2009, a year after he left the district to become the Peotone High School athletic director. Stevens worked for District 202 from 2005 to 2008, first as the dean of students at Ira Jones Middle School and later as director of the Learning Lab, coach of the seventh-grade basketball team and Plainfield Central High School’s assistant boys basketball coach.

Stevens began his teaching career in 1996 as a physical education and health teacher at Crescent City Grade School in Crescent City, Ill., where he also coached boys and girls basketball and golf and served as the junior high school athletic director. From 1999 to 2005, he worked for the Peotone School District as an eighth-grade U.S. history teacher, dean of students, assistant principal, sophomore girls basketball coach, and junior varsity and varsity baseball coach.

Interestingly, at the time he was rehired by District 202 he said he already knew many of the Plainfield North students because he remembered them from Ira Jones.

Doug and Jovy Stevens married in February 2003. Jovy Stevens said news of her husband's alleged extramarital relationship has been hard on her son, who is a Plainfield North senior.

She said she learned of her husband’s alleged infidelity only a week after Ashley Blumenshine’s arrest. At the time, Doug Stevens defended Blumeshine’s behavior and told her he continued to respect her abilities as a coach and teacher, Jovy Stevens said. That surprised her at the time, she said, but made sense once she learned of his alleged affair.

“He’s lost his home, he’s lost his family, he’s lost his profession,” she said. “I hope it was worth it.”