Isaac Garbia developed an app to help international World Cup fans visiting America this summer.
Isaac Garbia’s app helps soccer fans from around the world navigate their way through the World Cup.
“Start small. Nobody is born with superhero powers. Everyone’s starting out the same. You learn something and build on that. And you keep on building.”
The story of Isaac Garbia’s ’26 app starts, as a lot of good stories do, with something he loves. Soccer.
Not likes. Loves.
Isaac has been playing the game since he was two. Back then, the shin guards were almost as tall as he was. He was nervous. There were games he would sit on the sideline and cry rather than take the field.
That phase didn’t last long. Soon he was playing every day. Then coaching. Then refereeing.
Today, when he’s not working you’ll find him officiating youth matches. “When I say it’s part of my life, it’s the center of my life,” Isaac says. “Everything rotates around it.”
That passion recently led him somewhere he never expected to go: the Apple App Store.
As part of his senior seminar capstone project, Isaac developed Plan Play Go, a travel-planning app designed to help visitors navigate major sporting events, beginning with the 2026 FIFA World Cup.
What’s remarkable isn’t just the app itself. It’s that a few months before he started building it, Isaac barely knew how to code.
“I started from zero,” says Isaac, who graduated this spring with a degree in Cyber & Network Security.
The idea for the project came naturally enough. Isaac knew he wanted his capstone to focus on something he genuinely enjoyed.
“If I’m doing something I care about, I’ll put everything into it,” he says. “If I don’t care about it, it feels like a task.”
Soccer certainly wasn’t a task. The inspiration came from his own experiences living overseas and traveling. Visitors arriving in a new city often struggle with basic questions: Where should I stay? What’s the easiest way to get to an event? What attractions are nearby? How do I get around without a car?
While reading an article about fans planning trips to the World Cup, Isaac learned that many visitors were booking hotels in downtown Dallas without realizing the matches would actually be played nearly 40 minutes away in Arlington. That got him thinking.
“What if everything was in one place?” he says. Instead of opening multiple websites and conducting endless searches, users could simply open an app and find transportation options, hotels, attractions, maps and recommendations tailored to their destination.
The idea sounded simple. Building it wasn’t. Isaac admits there were moments when the project felt intimidating. Many of his classmates had years of programming experience. He had almost none.
His father offered advice that would become something of a guiding principle. “Everybody starts not knowing anything,” Isaac recalls him saying. “The only way you’re going to learn is by putting yourself out there and doing it.”
So he did. Over four to five months, the project grew. What began as a simple website evolved into something larger. Maybe, he began to think, this could become something real. That confidence was reinforced by one of his biggest supporters on campus: Computing Technology and Information Systems professor Chafic Bou-Saba.
Isaac transferred to Guilford from Saint Leo University in Florida midway through his sophomore year. He arrived looking for more playing time on the soccer field and quickly found something else: faculty members invested in his success.
Chafic became especially influential. “He kept telling me my bar was too low,” Isaac says. “You don’t hear that very often from professors.”
When Isaac doubted himself, Chafic pushed him. When he questioned whether the project was worth presenting at the Guilford Undergraduate Symposium, Chafic encouraged him to share it.
“He believed in me before I believed in myself,” Isaac says.
Then came another challenge: getting the app approved by Apple. The first submission was rejected. Then another. Then another.
Eventually, after months of work, Isaac received an email while attending a business dinner with his father. His app had been approved.
Today, Isaac has bigger ambitions. He hopes to expand the concept beyond the World Cup and into broader travel planning. He envisions partnerships with hotels, tourism organizations and attractions.
One day, he’d like users to book tickets and reservations directly through the platform. For now, he’s focused on taking the next step. His advice to others is simple.
“Start small,” he says. “Nobody is born with superhero powers. Everyone’s starting out the same. You learn something and build on that. And you keep on building.”