Around the Rivers: Graduates, Golf, Storms and Movies

Amid  and  hurled into the air, to plenty of advice about the future during commencement ceremonies throughout the region.

Patch brought you plenty of other stories as well from Around the Rivers over the past week. Among them:

Those who know him best say basketball isn't everything to Aaron Johnson, who graduated Friday from Moon Area High School after racking up 1,626 points and 940 rebounds on the school's basketball team.

The 6-foot-4-inch forward, who is also an advanced placement student with a 5.0 GPA,  He was among the distinguished speakers who addressed students Friday during a commencement ceremony that also included a who was killed in a car crash in December.

Johnson, the son of former University of Pittsburgh player Gil Johnson, plans to attend the College of William and Mary.

“His academics are going to come first,” said Moon’s assistant basketball coach Eric Thompson. “It’s just the way he is. His head is on so straight."

Richland native and 1990  JulieHera DeStefano graduated from Carnegie Mellon University in 1995 and won small roles in several movies before moving on to the film project that now consumes her.

Inspired by an episode of "Oprah" that featured the story of a female war veteran, DeStefano now is completing “Female Veterans on the Long Journey Home: A Documentary.”  DeStefano, who traveled to military bases in Afghanistan and around the United States to interview nearly 100 service women for the project, said she hopes to release the film in 2012.

DeStefano, who also amassed experience by managing a film and photography studio, also plans to follow several women soldiers after they return from duty in Afghanistan to detail their lives at home.

“We want to tell their stories," she said of her film's subjects. "We want to serve them the way they have served us, the way they have served our country.”

Seneca Valley High School's starting pitcher Matt Smith picked up where he left off in the WPIAL championship, leading the Raiders to a victory Thursday in the PIAA Class AAAA quarterfinal at North Allegheny High School.

The Raiders once again defeated Peters Township, 6-4, in a  from the week before. Smith struck out six Indians batters while leading his team to the PIAA semifinals Monday in Chambersburg.

Veteran Peters Township coach Joseph Maize said he wouldn’t be surprised if Seneca Valley goes all the way to the state title.

“Defensively, they did the job they needed to do,” Maize said. “Excellent coaching on their part. We knew they were going to be well prepared.

With a few cigars, a couple of beers and the late afternoon sun slowly dipping behind the hillside, six-time PGA Tour winner Rocco Mediate christened a newly refurbished driving range and practice area named in his honor. 

Mediate took the first shot Thursday to open "Roc's Range" at the He helped to donate $60,000 for rebuilding the driving range and practice area and helping with the club’s youth golf program. 

Before the engraved stone marker was unveiled, Mediate took on a friendly wager, hit a few balls on the practice range and shared pointers with members. The Greensburg native also participated in the club's sixth annual Old Elvis Cup along with PGA Tour winner MattBettencourt, Pine-Richland’s own Mike VanSickle and Tri State PGA Player Kevin Shields.

Henry Mickey was standing in his kitchen Tuesday afternoon when heavy winds from a storm uprooted the large maple tree in his backyard, sending it crashing through the roof and attick of his home and into his second-floor bedrooms.

Mickey wasn't hurt and his wife, Maria, was at work at her in Sewickley when the tree crashed into their home at 218 Linden Court. A minute or two earlier, he said, he'd been standing in one of the damaged bedrooms.

“He called me, and I thought he was kidding around,” Maria Mickey said. “He said, ‘We’ve got a tree in our bedroom.’ I said, ‘Yeah Henry, yeah.’ Then he said, ‘Maria, the old tree in the backyard fell on the house.’ I knew he wasn’t joking.”

“We’re very blessed,” Maria Mickey added.

Jim Belch, the new head chef at AntiquiTea Tearoom in West View, is often a quirky jokester who talks to himself or adopts accents to amuse others around him.

But he's nothing but serious about preparing and serving the best possible food from the kitchen of this quaint, Victorian-inspired tearoom on Perry Highway.

“I have a zest for life and cooking,” he says. “I like to think of each day as a blessing. I'm very, very serious about the things that are dear to me, like cooking and faith and family.”

Trained at the noted  Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, NY, Belch spent more than 20 years as a teacher at the Pittsburgh Culinary Institute, now known as the soon-to-be defunct Le Cordon Bleu Institute, before leaving in the spring. 

Two days later, he was baking and blending in the kitchen at AntiquiTea.

Pine-Richland, Moon Students Join Film Productions

 cast in "The Perks of Being a Wallflower," one of several movies being shot or planned for Western Pennsylvania.

Muschweck, who will be a fifth-grader at Eden Hall Upper Elementary School in the fall, landed the role of young Candace in the movie based on the popular young-adult book written by Stephen Chbosky, an Upper St. Clair native. Chbosky also is directing the movie, which is filming in neighborhoods around Pittsburgh. 

Muschweck landed her first TV commercial when she was just 12 months old, and she's been in a number of commercials since then.

 is another aspiring actress,  student Kiera Amerio.

The eighth-grader spent two days shooting scenes in Pittsburgh after being hired as an extra in Steel Town, a movie starring Maggie Gyllenhaal, Holly Hunter and Viola Davis. She spent time on camera with Gyllenhaal, who was nominated for a Best Supporting Actress Oscar for 2009's Crazy Heart.

Amerio also boasts a lengthy performing arts resume. She began acting when she was 5 and has performed with the Carnegie Performing Arts Center and the Old School House Players in Hickory.