LISBON – Lisbon High School’s wrestling program bid farewell to locally famous last names over the last two years at a pace that was dizzying, even depressing.

Catch you around, Clark and Cossar. See you later, Stambach. Give us a call sometime, Giusto. Hasta la vista, Adams.

Somehow the Greyhounds are carving out new family traditions while almost completely starting over, and the building project begins with the brothers Bubar.

Cam, a sophomore, a Marcus, a junior, lurk in the heart of a revamped lineup that has garnered team and individual honors throughout New England, inspiring Lisbon to rewrite its immediate expectations at the state level.

“We had a goal just to rebuild,” said Marcus Bubar. “We weren’t expecting to win states, but now that it’s all coming together and we’re working hard, we actually have a chance.”

With the Mid-State League, Western Class C and state meets on the horizon the next three Saturdays, a Lisbon team devoid of seniors appears poised to reclaim the place of honor it oversaw most of this decade, hoisting Class C championships in 2001, 2002, 2003 and 2006.

“We didn’t think we were going to be up in the top, and we didn’t really know how we’d do it. We do a lot of the work in here,” Cam Bubar said before a recent, well-hidden practice in an old elementary school gymnasium. “We tell the freshmen what you do in here is what you’re going to do out there.”

Out in a more public venue, the Greyhounds have continued their winning ways without a cadre of superstars. Perhaps making a push for the next-closest thing are the Bubars.

Marcus finished third in both the McDonald’s Tournament at Rumford and matched that performance in the Noble Invitational, a 32-team holiday festival in Berwick. More recently, he was sixth in his 140-pound class at the Essex (Vt.) Invitational.

Cam’s accomplishments include fourth at McDonald’s and the Sanford tournament and fifth at Noble.

“We had state champions retire, and it was families we had working out with us for years,” Lisbon coach Mark Stevens said of the recent, scary pattern. “We had older brothers, and now younger brothers were starting to graduate. All these guys who had famous last names graduated, and their families are gone. These kids are from a new generation. They don’t mind working hard.”

Not that the Bubar boys, despite their brief background, are without a tradition to call their own.

They hit the mat running off a fall season that saw both play a pivotal role in Lisbon’s first-ever Mountain Valley Conference boys’ soccer championship.

“Teachers like them. They’re great kids with great character,” Stevens said. “I watched them during soccer season, and they’d come in and make things happen in the last 30 seconds. They’re playmakers. That’s how they do it in wrestling, too.”

Taking a leadership role during the winter season means bearing the weight of a tradition when you weren’t necessarily one of the culprits who constructed it.

Tyler Clark, Ryan Giusto and Mark Stambach each won individual state championships last February. Both Bubars were able to plod along quietly, claiming runner-up honors in their respective weight classes, while those three seniors fielded most of the pressure of the team title defense.

Dirigo dethroned Lisbon by 11 points, a verdict the Greyhounds have avenged with two dual meet victories and a higher point total at one prominent tourney.

“We’re a lot farther than I thought we were going to be. I thought we were going to have a rebuilding year, but our freshmen have stepped it up a lot,” said Marcus. “We don’t have the one or two superstars. We have a bunch of quality wrestlers who work hard.”

Lisbon’s lead duo and its coach acknowledge that it’s nice having a rival be the team to beat.

Stevens compared Lisbon’s status before its youth movement to the plight of another, better-known Team of the Decade in its sport.

“Remember when we were state champs three years in a row? Everybody hated us,” he said. “I lost a lot of friends. People wouldn’t talk to me at coach’s meetings. It was like the Patriots. People find every little mistake you make. We were under a microscope for years.

“We have a very secret recipe. We train hard. I think that’s kind of a rite of passage. Kids know that when they come in.”