Eau Claire, WI
Chippewa Valley Technical College
Growing up in Wisconsin, Caden Hebert picked up curling at age 6 when his dad brought him to a youth curling league. In 2019, a local school teacher and Olympian, Mike Peplinski, who represented Team USA in men's curling at the Olympic Winter Games Nagano 1998, formed a competitive junior curling team with Hebert and other teenagers from the Eau Claire Curling Club.
Within five years, they were back-to-back champions of the U18 national championships and won their first junior championships (U21) in 2025. Hebert credited friendship for the team's success: “We got to be good friends, before being good curlers.”
With Hebert as skip, this team from Eau Claire, Wisconsin represented Team USA at the 2025 FISU World University Games in Turin, Italy where they won a silver medal. It was the third medal all-time for the U.S. at the Winter World University Games in men’s curling, joining a gold medal won in 2007, by a team with John Shuster as the skip, and a silver medal in 2023.
Off the ice, Hebert enjoys golf and wants to be like his curling heroes, John Shuster and Matt Hamilton, and win an Olympic gold medal one day.
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