Zach Nelson was born to play basketball. Coming into this world at 10 pounds and 27 inches, at birth he already had a solid head start on the competition. By eighth grade, he was over 6 feet tall.
But his unusual height wasn’t the only reason Zach got into the game. “I liked all kinds of sports as a kid,” he says. “I played football, soccer, baseball. But basketball was always my true love.”
By the time he hit high school and was 6 feet 5 inches (he would grow another three inches before heading to college), basketball had become more than just a game to him — he wanted to make a career out of it. “My senior year I had a couple of Division 2 scholarships, which I thought were amazing, but I hadn’t been signed with anyone yet.”
That is until the night he scored 56 points for his Yuba City High School team.
In an impressive “scoring outburst” wrote the Sacramento Bee, “Nelson [made] his 56 points on 18-of-20 [shots] from the floor — putting both his misses back in. He made one three-pointer, 19 of 21 free-throw attempts, grabbed 17 rebound attempts... [and] he did all of this in 30 minutes of a 32-minute game.”
Suddenly, the “Can’t-Miss Kid,” a moniker the Bee assigned him, had become a very interesting recruit. College scouts from all over the country got word of the game and came knocking. “The next day my phone never stopped ringing,” Zach recalls. Some universities offered him full-ride scholarships, making the dream of playing college ball a reality, and putting him one step closer to overseas professional teams and even the NBA.
After considering his options, Zach ultimately chose Utah Valley University for all the growth and progress it was experiencing, which he wanted to be a part of. He was excited about what was happening at UVU, not just in its athletic programs but all over campus. “My mother was deflated,” he quips, “she wanted me to pick BYU —her alma mater — but UVU really was a great choice for me.”
Zach got off to a rough start his freshman year at Utah Valley, tearing the labrum in his left shoulder and having to sit out the season. In his second year the Wolverines won the WAC championship, which Zach says brought him pure joy. “It was such an exhilarating feeling...knowing that everything we had worked so hard for was all worth it.” But in his junior year, he suffered repeated injuries, tearing his meniscus and MCL, and fracturing his tibia and femur. And in the surgery to repair his knee, he developed a dangerous blood clot in his calf, which broke off and became lodged in his lungs, causing a pulmonary embolism. It was then he had to make a difficult decision. “What hurt more than all the injury was feeling like I was letting my team down,” says Zach. “Watching us lose games and feeling like things could have been better if I hadn’t gotten hurt made me realize I needed to find another passion in life.”
Zach enrolled in his class and began learning about the many ways he could still be involved with numbers while getting up close and personal with people at the same time. Soon his thoughts turned to his mom, Belinda. “I couldn’t stop thinking about how much she had needlessly worried about the family’s finances,” says Zach. “While I grew up in a comfortable, middle-class home and we didn’t really struggle, my mom always stressed about money, more than anyone I have ever known before or since.” Zach began to see that if she’d had a solid financial plan and been shown how to follow it by someone who cared, all her suffering might have been alleviated.
After obtaining a bachelor’s degree in personal financial planning and going on to earn an MBA from UVU, Zach became a Certified Financial Planner working at Rock House Financial, where he’s not only able to use his sharp analytical skills but his passion for serving others.
Experiences like this over the years, Zach explains, have really had an impact on him and have been important in shaping his values and the character traits his clients really appreciate, including his fierce loyalty and commitment. “I learned young to be responsible and that only grew stronger in me the longer I played basketball,” he says. And that commitment to building trusting relationships continues in his work with his clients at Rock House Financial.
These days Zach spends his time in other relationships that are equally important, such as with his wife, Prezley, and their new baby daughter, Zuri. He is happiest at home with them and his dogs, when he’s cheering on his favorite sports teams (go UVU men’s basketball!), and when he can tell someone they are on track to retire sooner than they expected. The office in which Zach Nelson meets with clients to help secure their financial future is a long way from the high school and college basketball courts he once tore up. But the Can’t-Miss Kid is still a sure shot in the financial lives of the clients he aims to serve.
