Gonzaga’s Tyon Grant-Foster Cleared for 8th Year of College Eligibility

Grant-Foster, who will turn 26 during the 2025-26 college basketball season, is onto his fifth program across eight years.

Tyon Grant-Foster of the Gonzaga Bulldogs drives to the basket against Brady Grier of the Western Oregon Wolves during the first half of the game at McCarthey Athletic Center in Spokane, Wash., on Oct. 27, 2025. Robert Johnson/Getty Images

The premise of student-athletes under the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) banner has always been five years to play four, in which, thanks to redshirt seasons, athletes had five years of eligibility in order to compete across four seasons. Then the COVID-19 pandemic hit in 2020, during which the NCAA granted a blanket year of eligibility to those student-athletes whose seasons were affected.

That made several athletes across multiple sports eligible for six college seasons. Every so often, someone would take two redshirt seasons, and with the extra pandemic extension, they were eligible for seven seasons. But there may be a first this upcoming NCAA basketball season, as there is a player who is channeling his inner LeBron James during his infamous press conference after joining the Miami Heat:

“Not one. Not two. Not three. Not four. Not five. Not six. Not seven…”

Tyon Grant-Foster of Gonzaga University will be entering his eighth season of college basketball this fall. He will turn 26 years old during the season.

Grant-Foster is the outlier of all outliers. He was granted a preliminary injunction by a judge in Spokane County, Washington, to be eligible this year after the NCAA originally denied his appeal for an eligibility waiver.

Grant-Foster was in the high school class of 2018—the same as the likes of Zion Williamson, Tyler Herro, and RJ Barrett, all players who are now in their seventh NBA seasons. He wasn’t a highly ranked prospect and ended up enrolling at Indian Hills Community College, in Iowa, where he played for two seasons.

After spending 2018-19 and 2019-20 at Indian Hills, where he earned NJCAA All-American Honorable Mention honors, he caught the eye of one of college basketball’s blue bloods in Kansas. Grant-Foster then transferred to the Jayhawks, where he played 22 games as a reserve for Bill Self in 2020-21. With limited court time, Grant-Foster decided to transfer again, this time going to DePaul for the 2021-22 season. This is where things got complicated.

In the first game of that season, Grant-Foster collapsed at halftime after playing 15 minutes. He had a heart condition that required multiple surgeries, keeping him out the rest of that season and the entirety of the next. So, after five years in college, Grant-Foster had two seasons of play at Indian Hills, one year at Kansas, and then just a single game over two years at DePaul.

With his heart ailment, Grant-Foster had few options to resume his career in terms of interest from college basketball programs, even after being cleared by doctors. But he found someone who he could relate to in Grand Canyon coach, Bryce Drew, who underwent multiple heart surgeries as a youth due to a rapid heartbeat. The two bonded, and Grant-Foster signed with the GCU Antelopes for the 2023-24 season—his sixth in college.

It was at Grand Canyon that Grant-Foster finally maximized his potential. He spent two years with the program, making First-Team All-Western Athletic Conference (WAC) both seasons and being named the 2024 WAC Player of the Year. His seventh year in college came last season, during which he averaged 14.8 points and helped Drew and the Antelopes reach the NCAA Tournament.

Grant-Foster’s four years of eligibility, according to the NCAA, were his two seasons at Indian Hills and then his two seasons at Grand Canyon. The 2020-21 year at Kansas didn’t count, as that was the COVID-19 blanket year, and both of his seasons at Kansas (2021-22 and 2022-23) didn’t count, as those were his medical redshirt seasons, with him playing just a single game.

However, Grant-Foster and his lawyers pointed out that in December 2024, the NCAA gave a blanket waiver to former junior college transfers who extended their eligibility an additional season. The press release from the NCAA states the waiver applies to student-athletes who “competed at a non-NCAA school for one or more years to remain eligible and compete in 2025-26” provided they meet all other eligibility requirements.

Indian Hills is a junior college that competes in the NJCAA, not the NCAA. Because of this, the Spokane judge sided with Grant-Foster, which has him, at the moment, eligible for an eighth year.

The 2025-26 season will be at yet another college for Grant-Foster, as he transferred to the Gonzaga Bulldogs in May. This is his fifth college across those eight years, which might be its own record amongst college basketball players. He’ll have Gonzaga teammates who were in seventh grade when he graduated high school. To Grant-Foster’s credit, he did graduate in 2023 from DePaul with a B.A. in Communication and Media and is in grad school with the Zags.

Gonzaga has taken a liking to these elder college players, as its roster is full of them. The 2025-26 Gonzaga team has three players in their fifth year of college, one player in his sixth year, one in his seventh season in Steele Venters, and now, an eighth-year player in Tyon Grant-Foster.