Jennifer Deware smiled as she carefully threw the first pitch from the pitcher’s mound. The Belmont High School baseball team watched from the sidelines as five more educators did the same.

Deware wore jersey number 11, the number her late son, Jake, used to wear. Jake was adventurous and loved the outdoors. He graduated from Belmont High in 2019 and died in a dirt biking accident in 2020.

Before the game on Tuesday, his friend, Jaxson Embree, who now wears number 11, gave Deware the jersey as part of the “My Jersey, Your Impact” tradition, a nationwide initiative where graduating seniors recognize a teacher or staff member who has had an impact on them.

Educators received a certificate acknowledging their work and a replica jersey featuring the student’s number. Then, they got to throw out the first pitch at Belmont’s game against Gilford.

As the educators threw their pitches towards the home plate, the seniors who chose to honor them, wearing a catcher’s glove, caught their ball.

“Receiving his jersey was super special to me,” said Deware, a behavioral paraprofessional at Belmont High School. “It just showed me how much we impacted Jaxson’s life.”

Deware has known Embree since his preschool days and said her son was somebody that Embree “looked up to.” Even though they were six years apart in age, they spent a lot of time together because they both enjoyed activities such as dirt biking and riding snowmobiles.

“My son said to me one day that he would always have Jaxson’s back and always make sure that he could do all those fun things,” said Deware. “So when Jaxson brought me that shirt, it just meant a lot to me because we were able to be part of his life that, you know, made him seek out things that made him happy.”

This game also honored Jake’s memory as part of the Jake Deware Kindness Project, which Deware and her husband founded to create a “kindness ripple” by contributing to causes that held significance for their son. The team wore honorary jerseys with his last name on the back.

Embree also gave a jersey to Michael Schofield, the plumbing and heating teacher at the Huot Career and Technical Center in Laconia.

“So, it’s special in a couple ways,” said Schofield. “Jaxson wears number 11, which is Jake Deware’s number. Jake Deware was my student as well, so I had spent some time with him, and it meant the world to me.”

Schofield has taught Embree for two years now and has known him since he was a first-grader. Embree said that, before his junior year, when he first stepped into Scholfield’s plumbing and heating class, he had no idea what he wanted to do with his life. The class helped him find a new passion.

“I really fell in love with it, and that’s what I’m going to do after high school,” said Embree. “He’s just a great guy, and he’s taught me a lot.”

To Schofield, being involved in a student’s life when they’re figuring out who they’re going to be and where they’re going to go is “the best part of the job.”

“I love having him in my program. Jaxson’s a great kid, a hard-working kid and I’m proud of him as a teacher,” said Schofield, who was “speechless” and “totally taken by surprise” by the honor. “Getting the shirt and being able to throw a pitch to him was super special.”

The event was a first for Belmont’s baseball team, and they hope to make it a tradition.

“It’s just a really neat way to say, ‘I recognize that you made a difference, and thank you’ and that means the world to us as teachers,” said Matthew LeBlanc, the head coach of the Belmont varsity baseball team.

LeBlanc is also the math lab teacher at Belmont Middle School and received jersey number 24 from senior ace Anakin Underhill, who threw a no-hitter at the game.

Educators at the game expressed that the impact they had on their students was just as great as the impact their students had on them.

Snezhina Dimitrova-Haskell, an academic support facilitator at Belmont High School, received Michael Collette’s jersey, number 5. When she stepped on the mound, she was “nervous” to throw her pitch to Collette, but the ball soared true. Collette caught it, and all was well.

“This is really important to me to know that I just started here, and I have had that impact on a young man. It means the world to me,” said Dimitrova-Haskell, who is from Bulgaria and has interacted with this cohort of students since her first day educating at Belmont High, four years ago.

Collette chose to honor her with his jersey because she was “a very great teacher” who “loves to help out students” and “always has a smile on her face.”

“This is called ‘Your Impact, My Jersey,’ but he will never understand the impact he’s going to have with me for the rest of my life, by choosing me,” said Dimitrova-Haskell.

Anakin Underhill, jersey number 24, also honored Brian McNabb.

Brady Thurber, number 3, honored Mr. Brace. Jake Michaelsen, number 8, honored Mr. Clark. Keegan Martinez, number 18, honored Mr. Foley. Owen Waldron, number 4, honored Mrs. Briggs.

Yaa Bame can be reached at ybame@cmonitor.com