They dropped all their summer classes, packed up their stuff and left Blacksburg for good. They say there's no way they're coming back.

Though Brent Metcalf, Joe Slaton, Dan LeClere, Jay Borschel and T.H. Leet are finished with Virginia Tech, Virginia Tech is not finished with them.

Seven weeks after losing wrestling coach Tom Brands to Iowa, the Hokies refuse to grant five of his athletes the scholarship releases they need to transfer without losing a year of NCAA eligibility -- releases the wrestlers and their parents claim they were promised long ago by Brands and Virginia Tech administrators.

Denied in their appeal to a three-person university panel, the families plan to take Virginia Tech to court, barring a deus ex machina intervention by university president Charles Steger.

"That's our only alternative," said Tom Metcalf, Brent's father. "We will be forced to do that."

Athletic director Jim Weaver and the Hokies will stand their ground.

"As far as we're concerned, it is settled," said Jon Jaudon, the associate athletic director who oversees the wrestling program.

NCAA rules grant Virginia Tech the right to deny the wrestlers scholarship releases, but the would-be transfers and their parents say Brands, Jaudon and Weaver, who would not comment for this story, assured them releases would be granted upon request.

Without those assurances, the families say, the wrestlers never would have signed on with the fledgling Tech program.

Brands did not return several phone messages left at the Iowa wrestling office. Hawkeyes assistant coach Wes Hand, a Virginia Tech assistant the past four seasons, declined to comment.

Brands did, however, support the families' claims in an affidavit he provided for their May 11 appeal hearings, at the request of a lawyer representing one or more of the families.

"The open release policy was something I was given authority to discuss with recruits and their parents ... because I could not bring in the quality of recruits that I was bringing in without having" that authority, Brands wrote.

Virginia Tech strenuously denies Brands was given such authority, asserting that while Olympic sports athletes are nearly always granted releases, there is no blanket "open release policy."

Said Jaudon: "We didn't tell Tom Brands, 'Hey, we know you need a chance to prove yourself as a head coach, so come here for two years and then you can go wherever you want and take all your kids with you.' That wasn't the plan."

The NCAA allows Division I student-athletes except football, basketball and men's hockey players to transfer one time from one four-year school to another without having to sit out a year, provided their original school releases them.

Without releases, the five wrestlers still can enroll at Iowa, pay their own way and join the club team. They would compete as unattached wrestlers at second-tier "open" tournaments, as they did while redshirting last season with the Hokies.

They would get some benefit from training at Iowa near Brands and his coaches, which include Hawkeyes coaching legend Dan Gable, but would lose the first of their four years of NCAA eligibility. Tech, meantime, loses five of its best wrestlers. They accounted for about half of the team's scholarship money and never officially competed for Tech.

"I don't think [Weaver] is a bad guy," said Doug LeClere, Dan's father. "He's just taking this personal with Tom, and the kids are getting the brunt of it."

The mess began in October 2004 when Brands, four months into his tenure in Blacksburg, hosted Dan LeClere, Slaton and Borschel, who all live in Linn County near Iowa City, along with parents Jim and Carol Borschel and Slaton's father, Matt Shaver.

The boys were enamored by Brands' passion for the sport and his resume, which includes three individual NCAA championships, a 1996 Olympic gold medal and seven NCAA team titles in 12 years as an Iowa assistant.

But their parents had concerns. Brands was the sole reason these national-level recruits were considering a mediocre program such as Tech. What would happen if he left for another job?

The Iowans say they posed that question to Weaver in a meeting in his office on Oct. 15, 2004, the day before Tech's 62-0 homecoming football win against Florida A&M.

"It isn't like maybe we misunderstood something, maybe it wasn't as it seemed," Shaver said. "We all heard the same thing."

Tom Metcalf, who lives in Davison, Mich., said he did not meet with Weaver but received similar assurances from Jaudon and got something in writing from Brands.

Alan Leet, T.H.'s father, said his family, which lives in Atlanta, spoke only with Brands.

Virginia Tech offered to grant releases a year from now, but the wrestlers have no interest in staying in what they consider a poisonous, distrustful atmosphere.

"You know, honestly, we don't want this to be a nasty thing," Tom Metcalf said. "We truly did enjoy Virginia Tech and enjoy the time that Brent was there. ... But when you feel like someone has done the wrong thing for the wrong reason, it's more of a principle issue at this point."