SPORTS

Caden Clark used golf as outlet for mental health struggle

BY ZACH ALVIRA

Arizonan Sports Editor

Hamilton junior Caden Clark was at his lowest point on May 9.

For some time, he had selfharmed. The marks are still visible on his arms. But on that day, he hit an alltime low.

He drove to a secluded area in the East Valley and tried to cut the two main arteries in either leg. He then phoned his best friend, John, for help, who told him to notify his parents. Sometime later, Caden was in the hospital and officially began a road to recovery.

“I was feeling very alone and dissatisfied with my life and with golf,” Caden said. “After it happened, I thought there was a missing link in the chain somewhere. There’s some sort of problem. It almost felt like I had to talk about it.

“Now, I feel more comfortable in my own skin.” It was still a struggle. But he finally began to see a future in July when his father, Dave, notified him one morning that he was selected to play this week in the 2022 PURE Insurance Championship, a PGA Tour event taking place at Pebble Beach Golf Links and Spyglass Hill Golf Course and airing live on the Golf Channel.

It gave him purpose. It gave him drive. He began spending three to four days at a time at Lone Tree Golf Club in Chandler, where he now works and practices with the Hamilton golf team. It helped him fight through the emotions he was feeling just months prior when he was at his lowest point.

Now, as he is just days away from beginning the event on Sept. 20, he is proud of how far he has come. “It really means a lot,” Caden said. “Within the past few months, I went through a lot of struggles. So, it really means a lot to me to say that I will have at least done this. I had fallen out of love with golf for a long time because of the state I was in. This reinvigorated me.”

Caden was selected for the event through the First Tee program, a life skills development program that teaches kids character through the game of golf.

He started with the program when he was 8 years old. Dave recognized some of the building blocks and character pillars involved with the program and wanted both Caden and his older brother, Mac, to be involved.

About a year after joining, Caden began to take golf seriously. He went from practicing at a leisurely pace to several days a week to better prepare himself for competition. It paid off.

Caden quickly became one of the top golfers in the state. And now, he has something to truly show for it with a state championship with the Huskies and playing on national television alongside a professional. There’s a long list of names Caden hopes to play with, including Kirk Triplett, Freddie Couples and Miguel Angel Jimenez. He’ll find out who he is paired with on Tuesday night, just before the start of the event.

“Kirk Triplett’s son went to Brophy, Freddie Couples … his golf swing is iconic when you think of vintage golf swings,” Caden said. “Miguel is just, like, he’s a personality like me. I think we would have a good time.”

Caden’s selection to the event was based off of his personal golf resume, which included history with the game, his community service hours and his own personal growth and development. He described it as “selling himself” to the selection committee.

He was one of 78 players selected and one of four from Arizona – Millennium senior Isabelle Junio, Dream City Christian senior golfer Jack Layman and Xavier junior Lena Durette were also selected.

As special of an opportunity it is, Dave wants his son to not look ahead. He wants him to enjoy the moment, enjoy the spotlight. Scores won’t matter to him or the rest of his family.

As long as Caden is having a good time, that’s all that matters to them. “I’m excited for Caden,” Dave said. “I would just like to see him enjoy the experience, not let the pressure get to him and enjoy it. “I’m proud of him.”

Caden is the next in a long line of Hamilton players to excel on the golf course.

The team as a whole has won several state titles under coach Steve Kanner, and many have gone on to play in college and beyond. Kanner referred to Caden as one of the team’s many “stars.”

Caden’s teammates don’t walk circles around him and what he went through at the start of the summer. He doesn’t want them to.

He’s open about his mental health struggles, that’s one of the reasons he chooses not to wear long sleeves to cover his arms. The team has been there as a support system when needed. When Caden was at his lowest point, he confided in First Tee coaches and Kanner.

To see how far he has come is special.

“I’m proud of Caden and I think a lot of it is due to the support from his family and his internal desire,” Kanner said. “I’m glad to see he has come a long way. I was surprised and saddened he was experiencing that. I’m glad he was able to get the help he needed and to me, that takes courage.”

When Caden returns in a week, he will dive right back into the high school season with the Huskies, who once again figure to be the favorite to win a team title in Division I this season.

Whether Caden continues with golf after high school still remains to be seen, according to Dave. But that doesn’t matter to them.

For now, Caden is living in the moment of all he has accomplished as a 16-yearold high school student. And he hopes to set an example for others battling mental health issues that it’s ok to seek help.

He did. Even if it was at a critical time.

“I didn’t want to be just another statistic,” Caden said. “Being able to say that I’ve been in that place and that I can use my story as sort of a platform to say things can get better, it’s something that feels like a blessing.”

Hamilton junior Caden Clark’s battle with mental health led him down a dark path that involved a suicide attempt on May 9. He sought help and has since thrived using golf as an outlet. It has led to the opportunity of a lifetime, as he will be playing alongside a professional partner at the 2022 PURE Life Insurance Championship beginning Sept. 20.

(Dave Minton/Arizonan Staff)

Tacos, wrestling and music return to Chandler park

BY CHRISTINA FUOCO-KARASINSKI

GetOut Editor

Rockin’ Taco Street Fest’s organizers are pumped about the Downtown Chandler event’s 11th iteration on Sept. 24. “We’re fired up,” says Mike O’Donnell, director of partnerships for Forty8 Live!, the event’s producer. A food, music and cultural celebration, Rockin’ Taco Street Fest will feature creative tacos from more than 20 local restaurants and food trucks. Accompanying drinks include fresh fruit fresca, cerveza, handcrafted margaritas and micheladas.

Providing the soundtrack are Ozomatli and Everclear, with other featured entertainment to include luche libre wrestling, hot chili pepper and taco-eating competitions, mariachi, a mechanical taco ride, margarita and michelada master tent and little amigos play area. “We always work on different things to expand the events,” O’Donnell says.

“We wanted to keep some of the staples like lucha libre wrestling. The wrestling is always a hit with families. We listened to our fans, and they wanted more shade. It’s still an end-of-summer-before-fall event. We have massive shade structures being built in front of the stage and all the way back just to make sure everybody is comfortable and cool.”

The margarita and michelada seminar tent will keep guests cool as well. There, celebrity bartenders will share the secrets behind their success. “They’ll show the different variations of making your own micheladas and the many ways of making regular margaritas to Cadillac margaritas and everything in between. They’ll learn how to take those recipes and enjoy it by the pool listening to Everclear and Ozomatli afterward.”

Rockin’ Taco Street Fest

When: Noon to 9 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 24 Where: Dr. A.J. Chandler Park, 178 E. Commonwealth Ave., Chandler Cost: Event admission is $25 plus fees; does not include food and drink Info: forty8live.com/rockintacoaz

Chandler’s Taqueria Factory focuses on tacos

BY KEN SAIN Managing Editor

Gamaliel (Gabe) Garfio said that when opening a new restaurant, owners must make some big decisions that will decide what kind of business they want to be.

Some of them are tempting. “When you open up a restaurant, you have choices, of how you’re going to go to market,” he said. “And believe me when I tell you, it’s very tempting when the purveyors … show you these buckets of salsa, and there’s buckets of avocado, and here’s meats that have already been seasoned and all you have to do just throw them on the grill, right? I’m not going to lie to you, it’s very tempting, because it saves you a lot of money and labor.” With a quarter century of experience in the restaurant industry, Garfio decided he wanted his new venture to make its food from scratch. Garfio, who owns eight Fruitlandia stores in the Valley, is branching out and starting a new taco restaurant, Taqueria Factory, at the corner of Arizona Avenue and Ray Road. Despite the temptation, he turned down the purveyors. “It’s not fresh,” he said. “And one of our goals was to satisfy the masses, right. But for us, it was very important for the Hispanic market to be the ones that we would target. “First and foremost, because for us, if we could satisfy the Hispanic market, which is really the most difficult one to satisfy, then we knew that everybody else would more likely enjoy what we offer.” More than two months in and Garfio said his new venture appears to be a success, with a number of repeat customers in the Hispanic community. The restaurants are very much a family affair.

Gabe co-owns both Fruitlandia and Taqueria Factory with his wife, Maria. His son Gabriel is the chef and his other

The Taqueria Factory in Chandler is owned and operated by the Garfio Family, including, from left, - Fernando, Gabriel, Maria and Gamaliel “Gabe” Garfio.

(David Minton/Staff Photographer) son Fernando is the operations manager. Their daughter, Briana, is in charge of marketing and social media. They decided to open Taqueria Factory because customers to Fruitlandia, which is a Mexican dessert shop, kept asking for Mexican food. They saw an opportunity. The Chandler location for both restaurants are right next to each other, so customers could order lunch at Taqueria Factory and then pick up dessert at Fruitlandia. “People would ask, do you guys sell tacos, burritos and different Mexican food options? And obviously, we don’t. And we decided, now that we acquired this building, and we had the space, we had been thinking about coming up with a concept that would take care of those requests.” The concept is basically to become the In-n-Out Burger of tacos. “They only sell one thing, right?” Gabe said. So they keep the menu simple. There are only four choices of meat for tacos: Al pastor (pork); carne asada (beef); birria (beef) and pollo (chicken). Fernando, the operations manager, said the top seller on the menu is the quesabirrias. “You got these cheesy quesadilla which you stuff with some marinated shredded beef and dip it in its own broth,” said Gabriel, the chef. “That’s just the moneymaker right now.” The tag line for Taqueira Factory is Tacos and Miches. That would be micheladas, which is an alcoholic drink made with beer, lime, juice and assorted sauces and spices. Gabe said the family’s Fruitlandia business is doing well after opening in 2006. In addition to the eight current locations, there are two more scheduled to open soon. And they are talking to people interested in purchasing a franchise both in and outside of Arizona. He said if the Taqueria Factory model is a success, they might open more locations in the future. It’s not an easy accomplishment in a major city where there’s a Mexican food restaurant on nearly every corner.

“I think that competition makes businesses better,” Gabe said. “In my opinion, I would like to be, hopefully, some sort of motivation for other restaurants to maybe step up their game, if they’re not there already.

“I don’t want to be the one that comes in and closes other restaurants. That’s not my intent. I would love to be the one that comes in and other restaurants in the area maybe use a little bit of what we’ve done here, which we believe it’s very special.”

Taqueria Factory

55 E. Ray Road | 480-672-5000 taqueriafactory.com