The Brownwood Lions will have to forfeit both of their District 5-4A Division I football games that have been canceled due to a player contracting COVID-19, head coach Sammy Burnett confirmed Friday morning.

Based on the vote of the District 5-4A Division I executive committee, the decision was made that Brownwood would have to forfeit its games against Midlothian Heritage, originally scheduled for tonight, and next week’s game at Waco La Vega.

Burnett had proposed that the Lions visit Midlothian Heritage on Nov. 6, but that was voted down.

“The vote went against us,” Burnett said. “The decision was specifically drawn off the fact that we didn’t shut down our school. As (Brownwood ISD Superintendent) Dr. (Joe) Young stated, we’re out today and we’re out Monday and we could have shut the school down, but that’s not the right thing to do. The ones that are being punished is our football team because (the district executive committee) wanted to go by the letter of the law, and that’s what they went by. They’ll be repercussions for them if something happens to them because as they tried to figure out another scenario they realized that they had made the wrong decision on us, but weren’t willing to go back and change it in my opinion. So, it is what it is.”

On Sept. 21, the district executive committee voted to move the Week 11 games to Week 6, erasing the original bye week for all teams and opening the final week of the season for make up games. However, that will not be the case for Brownwood and Heritage.

Heritage has scheduled a home game against 5A Division II Mesquite Poteet at 7 p.m. tonight, boosting its schedule back to the maximum 10 regular season games.