That wasn't exactly a good thing.

Not because the affable and optimistic Varsell was a chore to be around while he watched Bentley workouts before he was hired, but because Varsell was often watching those workouts next to him instead of doing the workouts herself.

"She couldn't run," Curtin recalled. "So she spent a lot of time standing there talking with me."

As much as it was fun to have the Burlington, Conn. resident around to chat with each afternoon, it was not a good situation for her longtime future in the sport. After a strong career at Lewis S. Millis High School, she had regressed physically during her freshman year at Bentley. Varsell suffered from shin splints, was always exhausted, and got to the point where she couldn't finish races.

"Since I was so used to being tired I didn't really realize there was anything really wrong," she said during a phone interview from Connecticut last week. "But when I had to drop out of our first cross country race this year, I realized there was something wrong. I couldn't just be this tired."

Varsell was eventually diagnosed with a severe case of anemia and put on iron pills. Within two weeks, she said she felt stronger, and the orthotics prescribed for her running shoes made her feet and shins feel more comfortable on the rough cross country terrain.

The pal Curtin then lost on the sidelines during workouts became his star runner during the indoor and outdoor track seasons.

Varsell went from a runner who had hardly ever ran more than 400 meters, and whose personal best as a freshman in the 800 was 2 minutes, 25 seconds, to a nine-time school record breaker in the event indoors and outdoors.

She finished fourth at the NCAA Division II National Indoor Championships in Albuquerque, N.M. in 2:12.26 and became the program's first-ever All-American runner. Outdoors, she ran a school-record 2:11.07 in the preliminaries at the NCAA Division II National Championships in Turlock, Calif. before running fourth again in the finals for a second All-American nod in the same year.

The girl who couldn't finish a race just eight months earlier had arguably become the most accomplished runner in program history.

"That was really cool," she said. "I'm still shocked the way it all happened. After cross country, in a way I thought it should happen because of all the work I put into it. But it was still a surprise."

Curtin is the first to admit it was a surprise to him as well. When he landed the Bentley job in December after seven years at the helm of the New Balance Boston Track Club, he looked to get up to speed on his new team through reading the evaluations left behind by former coach and current assistant Ed Lyons.

When he got to Varsell's evaluation he was almost sure his young runner was in for a boatload of disappointment.

"I don't want to say any goal is unrealistic," he said. "But this was someone who had never run better than 2:25 and she listed her goal as 2:12. That's a huge improvement in that event. It was pretty audacious."

Lyons' notes indicated he thought so as well.

"His comment about her one 800 was 'deer in the headlights,'" Curtin said.

But with her strength back and her stride less painful, Varsell was ready to prove everybody wrong.

She first broke a school record in the 500 meters at the Reebok Boston Indoor Games on Jan. 28 when she was the highest-finishing Division II runner. She then broke the 800 mark for the first time when she won the Northeast-10 Championships in 2:15.35 on Feb. 17.

A week later, she broke the mark again with a 2:14.24 in the New England preliminaries, then qualified for NCAAs with a 2:11.73 in the New England finals.

Two weeks later, she was an All-American.

"I waited until the last possible minute to qualify so it all wound up happening so fast," she said.

Fast is what she continued to run outdoors when she broke both the school's 400 and 800 records at the Raleigh Relays in late March, then went on to break her own 800 record five more times in two months. She again hit the 2:12 mark necessary to qualify for NCAAs in her last chance at New Englands, and was seeded 16^th out of 17 qualifiers at the national meet.

"At the same time my coach and I saw there wasn't much time separating my time and the top eight," she said. "I've always been a better racer than a time-trial runner so I thought I had a shot in the prelims."

She wound up seventh in the preliminaries with the school-record 2:11.07 – her best time ever indoors or outdoors – to make the finals before she finished fourth in a very tactical final.

"If you can get her into a real race she is able to run down some of the top runners," Curtin said. "This race was slow, to almost a jog, for 150 meters. But she stayed with it and was able to get the fourth place."

It left her repeating history with the second straight All-American nod.

"Every week she got a little better, a little better, and a little more confident," Curtin said. "I think if she stays healthy there is another level for her."

After once being less than thrilled at the notion of moving up in distance – a common trait among middle-distance runners – Varsell said she may be game for moving up to the mile next year and is actually looking forward to training for and running cross country this summer and fall. After a three-week rest, she said she intends to run up to 50 kilometers a week to get ready for her junior year.

"There's the saying that summer miles equal fall smiles," she recalled.

After a summer and fall full of frowns and fatigue the previous year, the prospect of Varsell arriving back in Waltham in peak condition in August is a thrilling one for Curtin - and bad news for Bentley's Northeast-10 rivals.

"It would be great to win a national championship before I graduate," she said. "I think that would be fun."

A bit of an audacious goal, perhaps.

But after all the strides Varsell made in the past year it would be hard to doubt her ability to chase down even the most optimistic ones now.

(Scott Souza can be reached at 781-398-8006 or ssouza@wickedlocal.com.)