50-Meter Case of Mistaken Identity : Track and field: After Howard is announced as the event winner, Turner is declared champion and in national-record time.

It’s a good thing Paul Turner of San Diego University City High is easygoing.

Otherwise he might have gone berserk when it was announced that Bryan Howard of Moreno Valley Canyon Springs had beaten him in the boys’ 50-meter dash with a national high school indoor record of 5.80 seconds in the Sunkist Invitational track and field meet at the Sports Arena on Saturday night.

“I was just shocked,” Turner said when he heard the announcement. “But I was pretty sure I had won. I figured (the officials) would take care of it.”

When officials discovered their mistake, Turner had not only lowered the former record of 5.81, set by Bill Green of Palo Alto Cubberley in 1979 and tied by Ray Threatt of Pittsburg (Calif.) in the same year, but he had run faster than the winner of the men’s 50.

Former USC standout Travis Hannah won that event in 5.81.

Although Howard was understandably disappointed when the correct results were announced, he could take consolation in his second-place time of 5.84, which was a national high school sophomore record.

Turner, who finished fifth in the 100 meters at last year’s state championships, got off to a good start in the 50, but he trailed Howard until the last 10 meters.

“I saw (Howard) out in front of me, and I just told myself to go get him,” said Turner, a wide receiver who is headed to Colorado State on a football scholarship. “I figured he was the guy to watch because he was in the state meet last year.”

The Morningside girls’ sprint team continued its dominance of the relay events at Sunkist.

The Monarch quartet of freshman Nicole Thomas, juniors Joronda White and Felicia “Pookey” Williams and senior LaShawn Stringer won the mile relay with a time of 3 minutes 54.19 seconds. It was Morningside’s fourth consecutive victory in the event.

Stringer, White, Williams and junior Tai-Ne Gibson won the 4x160-yard relay with a time of 1:14.69, the school’s third victory in a row in that event.

The Monarchs’ time in the mile relay was the 19th best on the all-time U.S. high school indoor list and the fastest on a 160-yard track.

The 18 times ahead of Morningside’s were produced on tracks measuring 200 meters or 220 yards, whose gentler turns translate into faster times.

“Basically, I was just hoping to run under four minutes,” Monarch assistant Johnny Estrada said. “But I think once they got going in the race and the crowd started getting into it, they picked up on that. They got into a groove and went to another zone.”

In other events, Bell Gardens’ Michael Granville set a national high school freshman record in the boys’ 500 yards with a time of 1:00.01; Brandon Vance of Los Gatos won the boys’ pole vault at a height of 15 feet 9 inches and sophomore Tracye Lawyer of Carpinteria Cate upset junior Danielle Boswell of Fresno Bullard in the girls high jump with a personal best of 5-8.

Granville, one of the dominant age-group competitors in the nation in both the 400 and 800 meters for the past several seasons, finished second overall behind Ethan Taub (58.82 seconds) of Santa Ana Foothill, but Granville’s time lowered the previous freshman mark of 60.4 set by Troy Delemar of Pasadena in 1979.