On September 28th, the season curtain dropped at Jack Travers Ski School in Florida, host of the final stop on the Water Ski Pro Tour: the Travers Grand Prix. And like every good finale, it was equal parts spectacle, heartbreak, and triumph.
On the women’s side, Jaimee Bull - fresh off her third world title - found herself in the kind of pressure cooker that makes this sport unforgettable. A three-way tie at 1 at 41 off with Regina Jaquess and Whitney McClintock-Rini led to a runoff where Jaimee came up just short, settling into third on the day. Still, for a skier who’s turned dominance into habit, it was less a stumble and more a punctuation mark at the end of another season that belongs to her.
Allie Nicholson, steady and relentless, put her stamp on 2025 with a fifth-place finish in Florida that locked in her first-ever top three in the season-long Water Ski Pro Tour standings. Third overall may not sound revolutionary, but when you rewind the tape to her 10th place finish in 2021 and back-to-back fourths in 2023 and 2024, you see the climb of this current US Masters Champion for what it is: deliberate, determined, and deserved.
Annemarie Wroblewski rounded out the Syndicate women’s push with a gritty seventh-place finish at 1 at 39. After a year that included finals appearances at both pro events and the World Championships in Italy, Annemarie’s return to the stage feels less like a surprise and more like a preview of whats to come for the Ragin' Cajun.
The men weren’t about to let the women hog the drama. Rob Hazelwood nearly cracked the podium, putting down his best performance of the weekend in the finals, with 4 at 41 off. After torching 41 off in the 2nd round of prelims, Jon Travers - host, competitor, and master of chaos - was on pace to run deep into 41 before the sport’s cruel physics bucked him forward at four. He walked away with a top five and the satisfaction of knowing he staged a finale worthy of its billing.
And while the scores tell part of the story, the Grand Prix is more than a pro tournament. It’s a Pro+Am mashup of skiing, go-karting, and skeet shooting, a test of everything from balance to bravado. When the dust settled, the team of Hazelwood and Dane Mechler - plus Syndicate team manager Marcus Brown as an Amateur - stood atop the podium. Brown himself walked away with the “Best Shooter” award, after a dead-eye shoot-off that had the gallery buzzing.
For HO/Syndicate, the weekend was more confirmation than coronation. Another Constructors Cup season title in the bag, another reminder that innovation doesn’t just happen in a design lab - it’s lived out on the water by athletes who test limits, break records, and carry a ski brand’s name across finish lines around the globe.
The Travers Grand Prix may have been the last stop of 2025, but for Syndicate, it was also a reminder: endings are really just the setup for what comes next.
