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Meet Jayden Pryor: The Palestine Prodigy

After being selected among 200,000+ kids, Pryor will travel to compete in the NBA's national math competition this weekend.

PALESTINE, Texas — Take one part spunk and add one part mathematical genius and you'll get Jayden Pryor- the ten year old Palestine Prodigy.

The A.M. Story Intermediate student heads to Philadelphia this weekend to compete in the NBA's national math competition- Math Hoops.

Jayden's mom, Shaunda Pryor, had no clue what they were getting into. 

“He was like, 'Hey, Mom, can I apply for this competition?' And I was like, 'competition?'" Shaunda said. "I don't know how many kids there are so it's like a one in a billion shot.”

Jayden's shot went in.

Chosen among more than 200,000 kids nationwide, Jayden will represent Texas.

To play Math Hoops, students draft a team of NBA and WNBA players and solve math problems using real player statistics.

“We get to go against players to race and see who wins and have fun,” Jayden said. 

He couldn't hide his excitement and neither could his mom.

"She started crying when I got picked,” Jayden said.

His coach, Stephanie Wickware, saw him through the entire process.

“I'm super duper proud of Jayden for accepting the challenge to go to Philadelphia and represent, not only for himself and his family, but our school, our our state, our city," Wickware said. 

Story intermediate is a Title 1 school.

“A lot of our students come from broken homes. Either they come from low income homes, or we have the mental issues that we deal with in different things. We have a lot of different barriers here that we see in our community,” Wickware said. 

That means Jayden broke those barriers and beat the odds. CBS19 sat down and played a round of Math Hoops with him and in true prodigy fashion, he beat us too.

NBA Math Hoops will be live streaming portions of the competition through the their Instagram including Sunday's final round, which will take place from 1:30 to 4:30 pm eastern time.

The competition returns to an in-person format this year after being held virtually in 2020 and 2021. It will be co-hosted by learn fresh, the Philadelphia 76ers, and the Sixers Youth Foundation.

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