Rising junior Simeon Pope approached Pam Pack head coach Chris Penhollow at the beginning of Tuesday’s summer wrestling training camp and asked whether he thought Washington could win a second-straight Eastern Plains Conference championship.

“I told him we better,” Penhollow said acutely. “We’re returning more than any other team in the conference. It’s there for us to take if we wrestle well and we’ll tell them that from Day 1.”

Coming off a historic and rather surprising season, Penhollow’s first since coming over from Farmville Central, the reasonable team expectations that were in place prior to the 2014-2015 season are now elevated universal goals — another conference championship, advancing past the second round of the dual team postseason tournament and having four wrestlers qualify for the state championships.

And while the first official practice date is more than four months away, the road started this week, as a handful of Pam Pack and P.S. Jones wrestlers joined nearly two dozen other wrestlers from around the area for summer training sessions.

“We’re really just trying to generate some interest in the community and get some younger kids interested,” Penhollow said. “The older kids come in from 1 to 7 p.m. with a little more experience. We work with them on a little more advanced stuff, conditioning.”

Student-athletes from Washington, Broughton (Raleigh), South Central, D.H. Conley and North Pitt, as well as the New Bern Youth Wrestling Club, participated in some light sparring exercises and drills, some hitting the mats for the first time since February. After breaking for dinner, the wrestlers returned at 5 p.m. to take part in a simulated dual team match, where they were separated into two teams and by approximate weight class.

The camp offered wrestlers the opportunity to restore their rhythms and learn from coaches, including Broughton’s Stan Chambers, while it also gave coaches the chance to evaluate their wrestlers for the first time in months. But ultimately, Penhollow said, it’s about getting the younger generation excited about the sports.

“Reaching out to some youth organizations, when you get kids in here rolling around at a younger age the better off they’re going to be down the road,” he said. “It’s tough if you get a kid who hasn’t seen a mat until ninth grade to get them to a level where they need to be.”

The same holds true for the Pam Pack program, which was supported by 10 standout underclassmen, the majority Penhollow hopes will return this year.

“The one thing about these young adolescent minds is that when they start having some success, they start buying into it,” he said. “So having a great year like we did, the young guys are more fired up, want to get involved and do more to get to the next level.”

Washington finished the 2014-2015 season with an impressive 29-2 record, its first ever Eastern Plains Conference championship and a dual team tournament victory against Bartlett Yancey (42-24). The team’s season came to an end at the hands of wrestling powerhouse Dixon, but Washington’s chances at improving upon last year’s success are favorable.