I was out at North Kern Golf Course today covering a Southeast Yosemite League mini-tournament, and as I was leaving, the Highland golfers were piling into their team van to head back down into town in the parking space next to mine.

Right before the door closed, one of them (it was dark in there, but I think it was Matt Hammons, though it could have been Sean O'Leary, a golfer who's also a Highland wide receiver) shouted my name out and asked me my prediction for the Arena Bowl on Friday.

I know I did predictions for every high school football game in the county last fall, and I plan to do the same thing in 2009. But for some reason, I hadn't thought about doing a prediction for Kern County's yearly indoor senior all-star game.

So when asked, I paused, then said "55-37." The obvious retort was, "55-37 for who?"

That's the tough part. I paused again, then blurted out "East side, baby!" causing the Highland van to erupt in cheers. Made some guys happy, that's cool. But will the East really win? Let's examine the game:

First off, if you want to consult rosters, they're here.

The East's strength lies in its speed — North's Julian Dean-Johnson and Golden Valley's Byron Newman are burners, in the mold of West's Ryan Mathews and East's Andre Smith, who ran the opening kickoff back in the past two Arena Bowls. If somebody does that for the East side, it's gonna be one of those guys.

The East also has the game's best defender in Highland's Patrick Su'a (along with O'Leary, the reason all those Scots were cheering in the van) and some unheralded players on the line like Arvin's Travis Hicks, Foothill's Angel Posadas and North's Ruben Suarez.

But the size advantage in this game goes to the West. They've got 330-pounder David Born from West, 285-pounder Yannis Mallory from Ridgeview, 210-pound WR/QB Jake Peterson from Bakersfield Christian, plus big receivers like West's George Robbins and Stockdale's Chris Bowie, etc, etc.

I asked each coach, North's Mark Camps for the East and South's John Wren for the West, what he thought his side needed for a win after a couple of weeks of practice. The answeres were predictable: Camps said his team needed to protect against the West's size, and Wren said the West needed to avoid letting Dean-Johnson and Newman make plays in space.

If this were a normal football game, I'd go with the West, hands down. Size on the lines would be too much. But the confined arena game — both in space (narrow, 50-yard field) and in alignment (rules prohibit having more than three offensive linemen) — favors speed, and I think the East has a bit more. Let's make it 55-47, but I'm sticking with the East.