Student-athlete overcomes devastating injury and emerges with superhuman gift for numbers

WACO, Texas (KWTX/Gray News) – A student-athlete overcame a devastating injury and emerged with a superhuman gift for numbers.

Blake Hyland, 25, can make mental calculations almost instantly. He can perform complex calculations that would make the average person scratch their head, but his amazing math skills aren’t the most impressive thing about him.

Blake Hyland hasn’t always had this superhuman talent for numbers. When he was 14 years old, he was just an ordinary child, a good student and a gifted athlete, until one day he had a tragic accident on a race track.

“I looked around and didn’t see Blake. Suddenly there was a big commotion in the foam pit as he jumped and landed on the side of the pit on exposed concrete. He immediately started having massive strokes and I rushed out and the ambulance came,” said his father Pat Hyland.

Pat Hyland said he called his wife, Cindy Hyland, and told her their son had “been in an accident.”

‘She said, ‘You’re joking. This is not a joke,” Pat Hyland said.

Blake Hyland was life-flighted to Cooks Children’s Hospital in Fort Worth, Texas, and was in a coma for seven weeks.

Cindy Hyland said things weren’t looking good for her son.

“They said he’ll probably be in a nursing home for the rest of his life,” she said. “Our whole world changed that night.”

Blake Hyland’s brain also began to change.

“I had a clock on the dresser in the hospital. Suddenly he started focusing on the clock and started counting everything: the ceiling tiles in the room, huge numbers, things. We gave him a watch for his birthday while he was there, and we had to take it off during therapy because all he cared about was the time,” Cindy Hyland said.

After sixteen months of intensive therapy, Blake overcame the odds and left the hospital. He left with more than just scars. He left with a gift.

As Blake Hyland continued to heal, so did his almost superhuman connection to numbers and time.

“He woke up and said, ‘Dad, it’s 8:21 in Afghanistan’ or ‘It’s 30 past whatever.’ He just started doing all these numbers, and whenever a nurse or therapist came in and said something about math, Blake started spitting out all this information quickly. Not just fast and accurate,” says Pat Hyland.

His recovery defied all expectations and after a year and a half of hard work, he did something doctors never thought he would do. He went straight back to high school. He graduated on time and attended Texas Tech, where he graduated magnum cum laude.

Now, ten years after his accident, Blake Hyland works at Bitty and Beau’s Coffee Shop in Waco, Texas. The store is known for hiring people with disabilities. He says he loves his job.

“I like dealing with people. I sing songs there. I do math and card tricks and more. I like to make people happy,” he says.

Blake Hyland has written a book and has a popular TikTok account where he tells a joke of the day.

His parents are amazed at his ability to connect with people and make them laugh.

“I see it all the time. People make comments to me saying, “I met Blake. He’s fun to be around. He loves life. Blake is already the man I want to be one day,” Cindy Hyland said.

She says that when people meet him, “they walk away with joy and happiness.”

Blake Hyland said he thinks numbers make so much sense to him because they never change. “

“Numbers never change. English changes every day. History changes every day. Science changes. Numbers always stay the same, he said.

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