By R.L. Bynum

Football kicker Rece Verhoff and former field hockey stars Ryleigh Heck, Dani Mendez and Sietske Brüning have all joined an amended complaint filed in Monroe Circuit Court in Indiana seeking a court order that would grant each of them a fifth season of eligibility for this school year.

The three Tar Heels are among dozens of plaintiffs now attached to Daley v. NCAA, a case built around the NCAA’s new “five-for-five” age-based eligibility model, adopted June 23, 2026 (see Monday’s full ruling below). UNC men’s basketball center Cameron Fens is not part of this complaint.

Verhoff set the program field goal record with a 57-yard boot against Wake Forest last season, when he made 19 of 23 field goal attempts and all 20 extra-point attempts. Without Verhoff, junior LSU transfer Aeron Burrell has handled all placekicking (including field-goal and PAT attempts as well as kickoffs) and punting duties, a rare case of one player filling all of those roles.

Heck and Brüning won national championships in 2022 and 2023, with Heck (65 career goals) named national player of the year in 2023. Last season, Heck had 19 goals and 13 assists while Mendez had 15 goals and 16 assists. They were the only ACC players to produce double-digit totals in both categories last season. Brüning had six assists last season and was named second-team All-American.

Coach Erin Matson’s field hockey team is off to a 3–3 start and ranked No. 11 and would get a big boost if Heck, Mendez and Brüning could play this season. It’s not clear what would happen if they are ruled eligible.

That rule allows Division I athletes to compete across five seasons within a five-year window, but it carves out one specific group: members of the high school Class of 2022 who enrolled in college straight out of high school and played four consecutive seasons without ever taking a redshirt year.

All four fall into that excluded class.

According to the amended complaint, Verhoff played football at Marshall during the 2022, 2023 and 2024 seasons before transferring to North Carolina for the 2025 season.

The filing states that Verhoff “competed with and against numerous fifth-year players in his career,” a phrase that runs through the broader case. The plaintiffs argue that Class of 2022 athletes spent years lining up against opponents who had already received extra eligibility through COVID-19 pandemic waivers, while being denied any such cushion themselves. If the court grants the injunction, the complaint says, Verhoff will attend North Carolina for the 2026-27 school year.

Mendez’s filing follows the same structure. She played field hockey at Virginia during the 2022, 2023 and 2024 seasons before transferring to Chapel Hill for the 2025 season, and the complaint notes that she, too, “competed with and against numerous fifth-year players in her career.” The circumstances for Heck and Brüning differ slightly. They never transferred, playing all four of their college seasons at North Carolina from 2022 through 2026. All three could play if the injunction is granted.

The case is in Monroe County because of Indiana’s connection to Stephen Daley, the Indiana Hoosiers defensive end who became one of the lead plaintiffs after a season-ending knee injury cut his 2025 season short. Judge Kara Krothe has presided over the litigation, and she spent more than five hours on Monday hearing testimony on the plaintiffs’ request for a preliminary injunction without issuing an immediate ruling. Both sides have since been ordered to submit proposed findings and conclusions of law by Thursday.

Verhoff’s situation has already played out once this offseason in a different courtroom. He was declared eligible in early August after U.S. District Judge Charlotte Sweeney’s ruling in Wisne v. NCAA, out of Colorado, granted a fifth season to Class of 2022 athletes nationwide.

UNC brought him back onto the roster, and he returned to practice within a day of the announcement. That lasted 16 days. The Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals granted the NCAA’s request for a stay on Aug. 21, and Verhoff’s eligibility flipped back to uncertain just over a week before North Carolina’s opener against TCU in Dublin. The Monroe County case now gives him another avenue to pursue the same outcome.

For now, none of the three Tar Heels’ statuses have changed. Mendez and Heck have already exhausted their eligibility, while Verhoff remains sidelined from UNC’s roster. Whether any of them suit up in Chapel Hill again depends on what Krothe decides in the coming weeks.

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