Judge grants Tyon Grant-Foster preliminary injunction, allowing him to play for Gonzaga in 2025-26

Grant-Foster can play for the Zags after all

Gonzaga Bulldogs forward Tyon Grant-Foster (7). | Photo by Myk Crawford

SPOKANE — After five months, three eligibility waiver denials and 2.5 hours of listening to arguments in court, Tyon-Grant Foster can officially join the Gonzaga men's basketball team.

Judge Maria Polin granted the Grand Canyon transfer a preliminary injunction Monday during a hearing in the Spokane County Superior Court, allowing Grant-Foster to play for the Zags in the 2025-26 season.

The ruling ended a long-winded saga for Grant-Foster, who, after sitting in silence for most of the hearing, showed some emotion as Polin delivered her verdict.

Gonzaga submitted the initial waiver request for Grant-Foster's eligibility in June — only to have it denied less than three weeks later. A request for reconsideration was made on July 17 and was rejected in September. The most recent appeal, made on Sept. 25, was denied earlier in October.

Monday's hearing took place after U.S. District Judge Thomas Rice denied the NCAA's motion last week to move Grant-Foster's case to the federal court level, remanding it back to Spokane County Superior Court for a session that was set just hours before the Bulldogs had an exhibition scheduled for 6 p.m. against Western Oregon at McCarthey Athletic Center.

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Gonzaga head coach Mark Few and some of Grant-Foster's teammates, including Jalen Warley, Steele Venters and Braeden Smith, attended the 25-year-old's hearing and listened to arguments made by both the plaintiff and defendant's attorneys.

Carl Oreskovich, representing Grant-Foster, argued his client's two seasons at Indian Hills Community College, a non-NCAA institution in Iowa, should not count against his eligibility, citing the famous Diego Pavia case and the blanket waiver the NCAA offered to all JUCO athletes that would allow them to play in 2025-26. Oreskovich also said the NCAA was "discriminating" against Grant-Foster because of his physical disability, while other exceptions to the NCAA's five-year clock exist.

Grant-Foster has Arrhythmogenic cardiomyopathy, a rare heart condition characterized by the gradual replacement of healthy heart muscle tissue with fatty or fibrous tissue. Grant-Foster was diagnosed after collapsing in the 2021-22 season opener when he was at DePaul, resulting in two heart surgeries that forced him to miss the 2022-23 campaign.

"Had he been medically able, judge, to go and do foreign study, foreign services, foreign peace corps; we wouldn't be here because it's already determined to be an exception [by the NCAA]," Oreskovich said. "So to determine whether or not [the NCAA] discriminated against [Grant-Foster]; they are treating him, with a member of a protected class, different than those people who are not members of that class."

NCAA attorneys argued Grant-Foster was still able to play two seasons of JUCO and two more after he collapsed, giving him four years of eligibility. Grant-Foster played for Grand Canyon in 2023-24, earning Western Athletic Conference Player of the Year honors, then appeared in 26 games last season.

NCAA attorneys also argued that Grant-Foster didn't meet the requirements to receive the Pavia waiver.

Alas, Polin sided with Grant-Foster and his team.

"The harm to the plaintiff (Grant-Foster) vs. the potential harm to the defendant (NCAA), really weighing those equities, certainly considering that as well; if we do weigh those equities, it comes out more in favor of the plaintiff," Polin said. "Having balanced those equities and having examined the preliminary injunction requirements, we did find that the equitable factors waived in favor of issuing that preliminary injunction."