Nelson enters his eighth season coaching for the New Trier Girls Hockey program and his sixth season as Varsity Head Coach.    Nelson began playing hockey at the age of five and played his youth hockey for the Winnetka Warriors.  He played all four years at New Trier for the New Trier Hockey Club, winning a high school State Championship with the Green team as a senior in 1999.  Nelson graduated from the University of Illinois in Champaign and played on the Illini Hockey D1 team for four seasons.  The Illini team participated in the ACHA National Tournament all four years and garnered both a second and third place finish in the Tournament.  In 2010, he was honored to be the recipient of AHAI’s Girls High School Coach of the Year, and in 2013 was named Illinois Ice’s Girls High School Coach of the year.  Nelson works as a currency trader downtown and he and his wife, Allie, and new daughter, Ivy, live in Wrigleyville.