Julietta Gonzalez studies the cylindrical formation of paper, straws and tape in front of her and offers a tepid vote of confidence to her construction partner.

"You want to try the baseball now?" she asks Katia Austria, who, like Julietta, is 11 and a sixth-grader at San Joaquin Elementary School in Stockton.

Katia looks at the slightly listing tower and concludes that if the pair were going to win this Math, Engineering, Science and Achievement, or MESA, contest, they'd better make some adjustments to their entry.

The girls affix paper clips to the tower's top, hoping that will strengthen the flimsy paper structure enough to hold a baseball for three seconds. They gaze around the roomful of other students crafting their own entries and wait.

Similar scenes dotted the University of the Pacific campus Saturday as the school hosted MESA Day, where 340 kids grew crystals, tested the strength of their balsa bridges and built gliders. Although MESA Day was designed to be a fun competition, this event had a somber overtone. If lawmakers approve $25 million in proposed cuts to state outreach programs, MESA's school-site classes in San Joaquin County and the annual Pacific event will end.

The state-funded college-preparatory and outreach program offers classes and after-school activities to fourth- through 12th-grade students in the county.

MESA's day-to-day goal is to encourage kids, many of who are members of ethnic minorities, to take an interest in math and science and to set their sights on a college education. Pacific MESA Day is special. Students of all ages compete or participate in a daylong series of science-based events.

"The comment that was made to me (from the governor's office) is that everything that a child needs should come from the local school district," said Maria Garcia-Sheets, who has lobbied legislators and locals for $175,000 to keep the program alive on a shoestring budget.

"In the last nine years, we've helped 7,000 children who wouldn't normally think about college to think about college, improve their grades and, of the 90 percent who graduate from high school, go on to a four-year college," Garcia-Sheets said. "Taking (MESA) away takes an opportunity away from our area children. It will change the future."

Garcia-Sheets is rallying teachers and the parents of MESA students to lobby lawmakers for program money. "I cannot let this die," she said. "These students are too precious to this community."

Julietta and Katia think about college. Julietta wants to be an artist, Katia perhaps a teacher. Right now, though, they just want to know if their tower will hold.

At the start of the contest, each pair of students was given a plastic bag filled with straws, a few paper clips, two sheets of paper, two rubber bands and a paper cup. Their challenge: Build the tallest structure possible, with some or all of those materials, that will hold a baseball for three seconds.

The duo decided to turn the paper cup upside down and use it as a base. They rolled the paper into a cylinder, secured it with tape and paper clips, taped it to the cup and stuffed the resulting tower with straws for support.

In their MESA program at school, they've been studying the basics of physics, such things as what makes a structure strong. They're used to having a bag of mystery materials handed to them with instructions to build something strong, light or tall.

Searching her purse, Julietta pulled out a purple knickknack box and placed it gently on the paper tower as a pre-baseball test. It slid off. The two decided to rearrange the paper clips.

Somporn Boonsalat remembers being a young teen and thinking his future was in the military. Now he's an engineering student at Pacific, which he credits to his participation in MESA. He still may join the Marines as a college-educated officer, or he might take a six-figure job in the private sector.

Boonsalat said some of his high school buddies who didn't join MESA are stuck in low-paying jobs with bleak futures. Some are locked up.

Boonsalat volunteered to coordinate classroom events Saturday and wondered aloud why someone can't come up with the money to keep MESA going.

"I was reading this magazine where Bill Cosby was giving away $30 million," he said. "And you see all these rich movie stars. Why can't they just chip in a million dollars? It wouldn't hurt them."

Judgment time arrived for Julietta and Katia. A test proctor placed the baseball on their tower as the room watched. It held without a quiver. Katia exhaled. The pair smiled as the tower's height was announced: 161.2 inches, the tallest in the classroom. So far.

The girls' smiles quickly gave way to worried looks and crossed fingers. Another team had survived the baseball test, and their structure looked really tall. Their creation consisted of a cup turned right side up and covered with paper. The paper served as a base for the straws, which were banded together with tape. They had fashioned a platform on top with the second piece of paper and the clips.

The competitors' measurement was 165.8 inches, a smidgen taller than Julietta and Katia's creation. The girls finished second, but their disappointment was short-lived. Balsa bridge building -- and lunch -- were next.