This Friday and Saturday, history will be made at Bismarck Legacy High School.

For the first time ever, the 50th annual Mandan[[[[ Lions Classic will feature a female wrestling division as well as a male division. While the female division plans to compete at Legacy High, the male division will host its event at the Mandan Middle School Gymnasium.

On the female side, the tournament will include a total of 16 schools: Bismarck, Central Cass, Century, Des Lacs-Burlington, Hettinger, Grand Forks Central, Killdeer, Legacy, Mandan, Minot, Pierre (S.D.), Rapid City Stevens (S.D.), Sturgis (S.D.), Turtle Mountain Community, West Fargo and Williston.

As for the male competition, there will be 13 schools participating: Bismarck, Century, Legacy, Hettinger/Scranton, Killdeer, Mandan, Moorhead (MN), Rapid CIty Stevens (S.D.), St. Mary’s, Sturgis (S.D.), Riggs (S.D.), Turtle Mountain and West Fargo.

All wrestlers are to compete in a minimum of five matches and teams will be asked to provide extra wrestlers so that all weight classes have 12 competitors. All matches will consist of three 2-minute periods.

The tournament will be held in a round-robin format with two 6-man pools per weight class to determine semifinal seeding. In the event of 13 varsity wrestlers competing in a single weight class, a bracket with a pool of seven and a pool of six will be formed. The pool of seven athletes will compete in four rounds on Friday and three rounds on Saturday.

Round-robin action will conclude on Saturday morning in both tournaments with semi-final and final matches to take place that afternoon.