The village of Semeni in Zagarancea commune was, on Sunday, 9 August, the host of an international freestyle wrestling tournament for children and juniors. The competition, titled “Nicolae and Andrian Pascaru”, ran from 09.00 right on the artificial mini-football pitch in the center of the village, turned for a day into a wrestling arena.
According to the organizers, athletes from five countries took to the mats — the Republic of Moldova, Romania, Ukraine, Estonia and the United States. From Moldova came teams from Ungheni, Soroca, Cimișlia, Nisporeni, Glodeni, Chișinău and Cricova, and from Romania — athletes from Brașov, Harghita and Iași. The competition’s poster announced five age and weight categories, from the youngest, under 9 years old, up to juniors — in both men’s freestyle wrestling and women’s wrestling.
According to the official poster, the tournament is organized by the Ungheni Sports School and the Zagarancea commune town hall, led by mayor Vasile Gaviuc. The competition’s director is coach Ghenadie Flocea, who also runs the wrestling club in Semeni, an association active in the village since 2011. Among the partners are the Ungheni District Council and two local companies. In a post on social media, the district council called the competition “a grand sporting event in Semeni”.
A bout on the mat at the Semeni tournament. Photo: Ungheni District Council (Facebook)
The tournament, at its sixth edition
The competition bears the names of Nicolae and Andrian Pascaru, whose portraits — a man in a suit and a young man in a sailor’s uniform — are printed on the poster and on the banner stretched above the awards podium. The tournament has a commemorative character: at the opening, the parish priest Valentin Gavriliță said a memorial prayer for the late Andrian Pascaru, and the Pascaru family from Semeni attended the event.
At the opening, the parish priest said a memorial prayer for the late Andrian Pascaru. Photo: Ungheni District Council (Facebook)
This year’s edition is the sixth, according to the organizers. The tournament also has a history written into the records: a decision of the Zagarancea communal council from March 2023 approved the regulation of the “2023 edition” of the same competition and allocated 25,000 lei from the local budget for organizing it and for awarding the participants. The document stated that the tournament is held at the request of the Ungheni Sports School.
What is known about the results
The athletes of the Ungheni Sports School won 17 medals — 8 gold, 3 silver and 6 bronze — at this edition, according to the Ungheni District Council and the mayor of Zagarancea commune, Vasile Gaviuc. The district president, Dionisie Ternovschi, also attended, speaking about the importance of commemoration and of honoring the memory of people of merit; the District Council supported the competition from the Performance Sport Fund.
The overall ranking of the tournament, with all the clubs and categories, has not been made public. Among the other teams, the wrestling club from Hîjdieni, in the Glodeni district, announced its own medalists: Nicodim Galesco, Maxim Gașinov and Teodor Galesco climbed to the third step of the podium, while Ion Bobu finished in eighth place.
A discipline with roots in the district
Freestyle wrestling is no accidental sport in Ungheni. It is one of the core disciplines of the town’s Sports School, whose director, Victor Graur, is a multiple national champion with seven medals at veterans’ world championships. It was here, too, that Pavel Andrușca was trained — the Ungheni wrestler now competing in mixed martial arts, coached by none other than Ghenadie Flocea, the coach who also runs the tournament in Semeni.
A note for readers outside the district: although in some social-media announcements the village appears as “Ungheni municipality”, Semeni belongs administratively to Zagarancea commune. The commune is one of the localities proposed for the future Ungheni municipality, but the merger is not yet finalized.