Chuck Nelson grew up playing beach volleyball in California. He attended Washburn University in Kansas, and the University of Nebraska, where he studied accounting. Neither school had volleyball in the 1950s so Nelson played football, basketball, baseball, tennis and was a pole vaulter. He was inducted into the Washburn University Athletic Hall of Fame in 1973. Nelson competed for both the Hollywood Comets and the Stockton (California) YMCA. He won two medals at the Pan American Games, a gold in 1959 and a silver inn 1963. Nelson served in the Air Force as a fighter pilot after college, and later became an accounting professor at Santa Monica College.
United States