MANILA, Philippines – Ariel Vanguardia knows a thing or two about delivering teams to championship drives or to a championship. He led the Jose Rizal University Heavy Bombers to the NCAA Season 84 finals (where they unfortunately lost to San Beda) and the Westports Malaysia Dragons to the 2016 ASEAN Basketball League championship. As head coach of the Phoenix Fuel Masters, he guided the then second-year ball club to a quarterfinals berth in the 2016-17 season.
On June 19, on the occasion of the 159th birthday anniversary of national hero Jose Rizal, Vanguardia — a Calamba, Laguna native like the former — is launching a delivery application in his hometown.
“During the lockdown of this pandemic, I was doing webinars also as a means of fund-raising for coaches and staff affected by the lack of basketball leagues,” related Vanguardia. “It started when I was sub-contracting them to do disinfecting mats via online selling. Then we encountered problems shipping grocery packs and items sold during the auction. So I came up with the idea of having a delivery service.”
“One of the coaches in need (who shall not be named) is a motorcycle rider so I helped come up with a means of livelihood and this delivery app called DELiBER,” added Vanguardia. “The letters ‘DEL’ are all in capitals to represent delis and food while ‘BER” is for ‘rider’ or ‘driver.” The letter ‘I’ in between two letters is in small caps to represent the internet.”
Vanguardia’s DELiBER app (the website is on Facebook) will have a soft launch on Friday initially in the Calamba, Laguna area.
“If we do well, then we expand to the CALABARZON area and hopefully, Manila,” bared the veteran coach.
“This way, we are teaching them to fish rather than give them fish,” summed up Vanguardia.
Vanguardia runs the popular Hoops Coaches International webinars along with Dr. Tedi Vilasor and this author and is currently the Sports Director and Team Consultant of BlackWater Elite in the PBA.