CHRISTIANSBURG — Judge Robert Turk denied Virginia Tech softball outfielder Bre Warren’s preliminary injunction against the NCAA on Wednesday, meaning she will not receive eligibility to play for the Hokies.
Warren filed the injunction on April 6 and the hearing took place on Monday in the Montgomery County Circuit Court. During the afternoon, her attorneys argued she should receive another year of eligibility.
“The Court informed us this morning that Bre Warren’s request for a preliminary injunction to allow her to play softball for Virginia Tech for the remainder of this season has been denied,” Warren’s attorneys, John P. Fishwick, Jr., Carrol M. Ching and Daniel J. Martin, said in a statement to Tech Sideline. “Obviously, we are disappointed with this result, but we respect the Court’s decision and will continue to evaluate Bre’s options with her.”
NCAA bylaws state athletes have five years to complete four seasons. If she had been allowed to play, 2026 would have marked Warren’s sixth year in collegiate softball. Warren has not played with Virginia Tech this season. She has been with the team but not in uniform during games.
Derek Gwinn, Virginia Tech’s executive associate athletic director for compliance, testified Warren and the school first submitted the waiver on Oct. 30, 2025. He testified that Virginia Tech went somewhere around five or six weeks without correspondence from the NCAA until her waiver request was denied in early February. Warren and Virginia Tech appealed, and the NCAA denied it on Feb. 25 — more than three weeks into the season and after the program had already played 13 games.
The NCAA’s basis for denying her request was Virginia Tech did not prove the denial of two participation opportunities. The school proved one — when she redshirted at Texas A&M as a sophomore after sustaining a shoulder injury — but the NCAA said her not playing in 2025, while at South Carolina, was not a denied participation opportunity.
Warren transferred to Virginia Tech ahead of the 2026 campaign after not playing in 2025. She spent 2024 at South Carolina and 2021-23 at Texas A&M. As a sophomore in 2022, she sustained a rotator cuff injury at the start of the season and redshirted. She was cleared to play under a new coach in 2023 while still in physical therapy from the injury as a redshirt sophomore.
Her initial plan was to complete her undergraduate degree at the end of the 2023-24 academic year, then start graduate school in the fall of 2024. However, she was released from Texas A&M after the 2023 season and transferred to South Carolina that summer, which complicated those plans.
She played at South Carolina during the 2024 season as a redshirt junior with the intention of graduating that summer. However, her athletic academic advisor recommended a class for which Warren had received credit at Texas A&M. At the end of the summer, per the injunction, the academic advisor realized Warren was three credits short of graduation and would not be able to complete her coursework until December 2024.
“The academic advisor, I don’t know what happened or why she didn’t follow up,” Gwinn testified.
If she had transferred to Virginia Tech during the 2024 transfer window before graduating, she would have needed to complete at least 30 credits, due to a requirement that students receive at least one-quarter of the credits from the institution. Gwinn said many schools have similar policies.
During that time, South Carolina hired Ashley Chastain Woodard as its next softball coach. Woodard and her staff released Warren, preventing her from playing for South Carolina during the 2025 season, though she was still on track to graduate in December 2024.
“She didn’t have an opportunity to continue playing softball there,” Gwinn said.
According to the injunction, Hilary Cox, South Carolina’s executive associate athletics director for strategic initiatives, told Warren she could not transfer between the fall and spring semester — following her graduation — and be immediately eligible to play. “Warren reasonably believed she did not have that option,” per the injunction.
However, NCAA Bylaw 14.6.1.2 says students who graduate can transfer to another institution and receive immediate eligibility.
“Looks like it’s pretty hard to get good advice from South Carolina,” Fishwick said in court on Monday.
Much of the hearing also detailed Warren's experience facing “severe harassment, ridicule, bullying and discrimination by South Carolina’s coaching staff, including on the basis of race” — per the written injunction — under previous head coach Beverly Smith. She testified that neither Smith nor any assistants had intervened.
She detailed one incident when a member of the coaching staff told Bre to “act like a monkey.” The same member of the coaching staff sent a GroupMe message — which was displayed in the courtroom — with a picture of a dog tearing a money toy. She said her mental health “was very negatively impacted.”
Warren testified she spoke to a counselor and declined to report the incident because she said she did not want to generate more controversy.
“There were a lot of racist comments,” Warren said in court. “... That was a lot, on top of other stress.”
The NCAA’s argument, led by Taylor Askew, asserted that Warren had the opportunity to transfer after the 2024 season and did not. There was a 10-day window between when Warren learned South Carolina would release her from its roster when she could have entered the transfer portal, and she did not.
“It’s just [that] Virginia Tech thinks the NCAA got the decision wrong,” Askew said. “That’s not an actionable claim.”
However, Warren said pre-existing mental health challenges left her in “paralysis” during that time. She said she did not leave her room for two days.
“I was not in a place to make any decision at all,” Warren testified.
In the courtroom, Fishwick contrasted Warren’s situation from that of Chandler Morris, Virginia’s quarterback who sought a seventh year of eligibility and whose request was denied.
“This is not a case where somebody is saying, ‘I’ve played five or six seasons and I want to play another,’” Fishwick said “She just wants to play.”
Warren is enrolled in a graduate program at Virginia Tech in organizational communication management. She intends to graduate in May and is not seeking to play collegiate softball beyond this year.
Virginia Tech declined to comment.